Emmy winner Sacha Hoedemaker’s odd career from neo-classical & improv to Frenchcore
After 14 years, over 3,000 shows, and an Emmy win, Dutch musician Sacha Hoedemaker is making a dramatic exit from the improv comedy stage at Amsterdam's Boom Chicago. Hoedemaker joined the Dam Yankee podcast to detail the biggest leap of faith in his career, leaving stability to focus on his deeply meditative neoclassical solo work, and his creative detour into its complete sonic opposite, the ultra-fast, ultra-hard dance genre known as Frenchcore.
Hoedemaker is now taking his neoclassical music off the improv comedy stage and stepping into the spotlight with his solo work. His departure from Boom Chicago, where he found success as the theater's musical director, draws a clear connection to the themes of growth and purging in his upcoming album, Drift Season. “It feels like letting go and getting this fresh wind and clearing that which is no longer necessary for us or no longer serving us,” he told Dam Yankee host Zack Newmark.
He is a long way from his university days, when he studied biomedical science, a path he traded to pursue music professionally. It is this willingness to follow opportunity, which he likens to the movie, Yes Man, that has made Hoedemaker's career of unexpected twists and turns. “On a random Sunday,” Hoedemaker recalled, he was performing at a walk-in workshop with the Easy Laughs theatrical group, when he accepted an invitation to play improvised musical pieces during actors' auditions at Boom Chicago.
Little did he know, he was also being assessed as a potential assistant and eventual replacement for David Schmoll, Boom's musical director at the time. Hoedemaker took over for Schmoll in 2015, and kept developing his talent, but it was the Covid-19 lockdown that nudged him towards developing himself as a solo musician. That meant he went from doing as many as seven live shows per week to none at all, so he began small livestream performances for his friends, improvising on the piano based on their random suggestions.
He told Dam Yankee that he soon discovered HitRECord, a collaborative YouTube variety show from actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the spin-off series, Create Together #WithMe. Sacha wrote a neoclassical piece inspired by a photograph, Mixed Feelings by Raneem Al Daoud, which shows a beautiful view of blue water on a sunny day through a semi-railed window in a dark room.
Sacha’s music went viral on the platform, prompting one performer after another to add videos of their own dances and visual art pieces. The piece made it into Gordon-Levitt’s YouTube series and garnered millions of views, ultimately winning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Programming.
A year later, he was nominated as one of the top 50 performers in his category at the Amsterdam Dance Event in 2022. The desire to keep branching out and taking on challenges brought him to his biggest stage to date. He is part of Peacock in Concert, a concert experience created by DJ Dr. Peacock where a collection of musicians perform Frenchcore music.
“It's hardcore, but faster. So harder hardcore,” Hoedemaker explained to Newmark. The project connects musicians who perform together, and Sacha helps to compose the music live on stage.
Last summer, the group performed at the opening of hardcore and hardstyle music festival Defqon.1 in front of 65,000 people in Biddinghuizen, Flevoland. It is often considered to be the loudest event in the Netherlands, where the jarring bass lines can be heard from many miles away. At Defqon, a piece Hoedemaker wrote during one of the sessions with Dr. Peacock, called Illusion of Time, became a theme song for the whole concert.
“I cannot believe I wrote it, because I like it so much,” the artist said. It could not be more different from the contemplative and meditative piano music he records as a soloist. Hoedemaker revels in the beauty of this contrast. "The classic neoclassical music that I play is very slow, but if you put a very fast beat around it on top of it, it becomes this beautiful, meditative piece.”
After performing over 3,000 shows at Boom Chicago, Hoedemaker admits that his “performer muscle” is sore and needs rest. While he confessed that he has "lost a little bit of that" desire to perform live 10 times a week, he remains open to the future. Next year, Sacha hopes to perform as many as 15 concerts with Dr. Peacock across Europe. But when asked if he plans to produce more classical music or more Frenchcore, Sacha said, “I want to do more of everything!"
For now, Hoedemaker is releasing new song from Drift Season every three weeks until the album's launch on December 18. His music is available under his name on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. He is also active on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).
Listeners can hear the full Dam Yankee episode on all major podcast platforms or watch the video on YouTube, where Hoedemaker also discusses taking leaps of faith, managing career transitions, and the impact of trauma on life.
