When people ask me what the Fons Sophiae Collective actually is, I sometimes pause — not because I don't know, but because the honest answer takes a moment to land properly. It is an orchestra, yes. A world music ensemble, certainly. But it is also something older and harder to name: a recognition.

In 2020, the Holland Festival invited me to create an entirely new concert series. I called it When Paths Meet. The name was deliberate: not When Paths Merge (which implies the loss of identity), not When Paths Intersect (which implies a brief crossing), but meet — the kind of meeting in which two things remain fully themselves and are, in the encounter, more fully revealed.

Then the pandemic arrived and cancelled everything physical about it.

What could not be cancelled was the music. I composed, arranged, and...

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