CultuurpodiumOnline – Barbara Klomp

(...) Nynke Laverman can sing, that much is clear, but next to that she also is a gifted narrator. She tells the stories of the nomads she was living with. Stories about the steppe, the family, about rituals and customs.

(…) Great stories with even more special music and vocals. Five musicians accompanied her on several instruments and even the lighting and the seemingly simple set keeps holding the attention. The concert sometimes is powerful, overwhelming and in other moments quiet, personal and vulnerable. Therefore it was only logical that she and her top-class musicians got a standing ovation.

Leeuwarder Courant – Gooitsen Eenling

WANDERING BETWEEN MELANCHOLY AND PASSION

Over there not being able to tell where you’re coming from. Over here not being able to tell where you have been. Nomad between here en there. For her latest concert Nynke Laverman lived for a month with a nomadic family in Mongolia. Images and stories produced unique song material. The long shadows on the dry steppe, snow in August, the alliance with everything around you. But also the vodka-inspired wolf-song of the lonely woman or the sound of the beetles falling from the tent-heaven, revealing dreams. Laverman wraps her impressions in beautiful poetic lyrics and mostly dragging melodies that wander between melancholy and passion. (...)

The singular arrangements are top-class, the four musicians know to evoke miraculous atmospheres with guitars, dulcimer, lap steel, harmonium and a variety of percussion instruments. Everything serving the now robust, now fragile voice of Laverman. And sometimes you hear an echo from the Mongolian steppe: a rhythm, tinkling bells, a fragment of singing. (...)

‘I want new ground beneath my feet’, Laverman sings in her last song, ‘Let me go’. Of course we let this great talent go. But she has to come back to the ‘heitelân’ (homeland) to tell about her adventures. With songs that leave traces in the souls of us all.

De Noordoostpolder - Job Degenaar

AT LONELY STEPPE-HEIGHT

Two singular young women are enriching the Dutch music at the moment: Wende Snijders and Nynke Laverman. Both, averse to score too easily, are searching for new pathways. Or better: are constructing them. Laverman does it by interweaving her Frisian background with other cultures. A day before the premiere in Amsterdam on a stage full of impressing instruments she captures in sound her stay with a nomadic family on the Mongolian uplands, accompanied by her outstanding band. The journey mainly is a search for herself. With ‘I am the discoverer/ of the great unknown in me’ she opens the evening overwhelmingly, in a driving rhythm full of key-changes, with snare drums and cymbals. With her heals she stamps along with the fanfare-like rhythm and gets into her stride. Her slightly hoarse voice carries far and remains tuneful. (…)

A wonderful song like ‘Snie yn augustus’ (Snow in August) she sings now exuberantly, now quietly frail. The members of the band accompany her in an excellent way. Diverse musical styles, among which flamenco, pass by. Ward Veenstra delivers Segovia-like guitar playing, but also Radiohead-sounds come over. Sytze Pruiksma plays the dulcimer delicately. With the catchy ‘Lit my rinne’ (Let me walk) the Mongolian adventure ends, followed by a few encores, finished with an a cappella Frisian lullaby, mixed with song of the steppe, in front of an enthusiastic audience. Here are top musicians standing on stage. It won’t take long before the great audience will embrace ‘La Laverman’.   

MOORS Magazine:

Nynke Laverman went to Mongolia, came back and recorded a CD with mostly self-written, or partly self-written songs that do not sound so much Mongolian (less a few fragments), but that do let you hear very well that Laverman is on a musical adventure trip that is not yet at its end. Also it is clear she wants to get rid of her image of Frisian fado girl. She succeeds well concerning this, because she has made a fascinating CD that cannot be pigeon-holed. Starting with the overwhelming beginning of the album (especially mind the rhythm section), and then a fragment in which electronics play a big part. On this album a full symphonic orchestra is put into action, wind instruments, lots of diverse percussion, several string instruments and of course the voice of Laverman. It has become a breathtakingly beautiful album with lots of fine surprises. Very diversified and very, very beautiful. Highly recommended.


Platomania - Ruud Verkerk:

The fado left behind her and having dispatched a delicious Mexican meal Nynke Laverman last year got on the train to the faraway Mongolia. In search of adventure and of the pure survival like an increasingly smaller group of nomads still know it. She stayed for a month and came back with a suitcase full of inspiration. She dedicates the album Nomade to Mishka and Badambud. They introduced her in their world, let her discover true silence and taught her new vocal techniques. On the cover we see Nynke in the middle of the elements with in her wake a fanfare with animal heads. A theatrical image that makes curious for the upcoming theatre tour. The music sounds monumental and proud with enlarged arrangements of the City Of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, but also subtle thanks to the musical delicacy of her band under the leadership of Ward Veenstra. Special is that Nynke this time wrote all the lyrics herself. Concerning that Snie Yn Augustus (Snow in August) is to be called wonderful, but the rest is hardly inferior to it. It has become an exciting piece of work which contrasts sharply with her much sunnier album De Maisfrou, but which from creative point of view is the right step.