By Jill Hughes

USA Progressive Music: How did you come up with the story for Equilibrio?  Was it purely your brainchild or did you have others help collaborate with you to write that story?  What was the inspiration for the story?  

Ivo Van Dijk: Normally I write the music and our singer Bas writes the lyrics and vocal melodies. For writing the Equilibrio story we first painted the general idea (over a good glass of red wine, of course), and divided that up into the different events that had to take place. These events were translated into songs, and when I finished writing music (some of them together with our synth player Joris), Bas would fill in the details on each song/event in the lyrics. We talked over some of the events before he started working on the lyrics, and he also wrote some instructions into the lyrics about what was going to happen on stage.

Everybody who reads the story will probably see strong parallels with really common motives (For instance Primos makes a pact with Death: Faust). We tried to paint the picture of a semi-realistic world, without too much fantasy added to it, but in a way it could have been told in for instance, greek mythology or legends. For example, in "Song of creation" the goddess "Lady Sophia" "moulds clay to live", which actually refers to the old Indian creation myth. "Lady Sophia" in itself is the most important Goddess in the Gnostic belief, were she is the one who creates the god(s). "Aveline" derives from the name "Eve", since she is (in the prologue of the opera) the first human created. In the basic we try to tell a decent story about good and evil, without blending in orbs or aliens, and we are not trying to spread the word of any belief. Just a decent story of good and evil...

USAProgMusic: How did it come about to get Simone Simons and George Oosthoek to record on the album?  Is that who you had in mind when writing the parts?

Ivo: Simone and George were a pretty obvious choice for us, and although we didn't have a confirmation from them, (heck, they didn't even know about Equilibrio) I already wrote parts for them and their characters. I actually took some Epica and Orphanage work as inspiration on certain "Death" and "Lady Sophia" songs.

We knew both of them pretty well at that point, we played some shows with Orphanage in the past and drank the necessary beers with George afterwards, and well, there's only one grunter who is the best in Holland. :)

In 2005, we did a tour with Epica, and I got to know Simone a little better. I called her when we had a confirmation that the whole project would definitely see the light of day, and she was very excited from the beginning on. We were very happy to have these two people in our cast, and made a great contribution to the whole project.

USAProgMusic: Who is your favorite character in the story?

Ivo: That's a hard one, but I think it must be Death. Actually, this has more to do with the way George Oosthoek played Death. His main instruction for his role was to play everything over the top, and so he did. And that worked like a charm. He had a special "box" in front of the stage were he would pop out of when he made an entrance into a scene, and that had a great effect on the audience. I also loved the clothes/make-up they made for him.

What is your favorite song on the album (whether to listen to or it was your favorite to write)?

Ivo: My favorite to listen to on the album would probably be the “Traveller”, also because it was the very first song I wrote, and had the first important musical theme in it that set the musical course for Equilibrio. My favorite song of the complete opera would probably be "The balance crumbles" (a non-album track, but is featured on the DVD). It has a really cool groove in it, and was written in a really good flow.

USAProgMusic: It seems like it would have been difficult to coordinate so many different people to work on the project. Explain any challenges you had while putting together this project. Was there any point where you felt like the project would never come to see the light of day?

Ivo: I also got this question in another interview and I just don't know where to begin. So many things went wrong, got solved, went wrong again, got solved again. Fortunately there were no points where we were doubting whether the whole thing would see the light of day, but there were lots of points when I felt it was just sucking too much energy out of everyone. Besides writing the music, we were also working on the album production, DVD pre-production, helping the PR manager, doing interviews, designing merchandise, rehearsing the songs, going to the orchestra each Monday checking whether the sheet music was correct, met with the artistic leader, the director, the sound engineer, the light engineer, talking with the costume makers, the choreographer etc. etc... Fortunately the production team Confusio Musica did a great job in organizing everything behind the screens (finances, PR, etc.), and we worked very closely with them. If that collaboration wasn't there, the stage-performance would never have seen the light of day.

USAProgMusic: How did you get hooked up with Sensory Records/Ken Golden?

Ivo: Ken already carried our 2 previous albums (2007's Surreal and 2004's Receiving Tomorrow) in his shop and wanted to order some copies of the new Equilibrio album. When he found out that we parted with the label we had (or should I say, had us) at that time, he contacted me through mail asking if we were looking for distribution. We made a couple of calls to each other and it seemed to click. Everything went pretty smooth I reckon, and there is a healthy relationship which I hope could last for a while!

USAProgMusic: What has been your impression so far of the reviews you have been receiving of the album?

Ivo: A lot of people love the album, love the vocalist and the songs as they are. We got a lot of positive feedback on the production which I and Joris (synths) did. So that's all great.

We also got quite a few reactions saying the album is cool etc. but that they miss a certain amount of metal. Which I understand, but if you look at it as a "metal" album, you didn't get the idea behind this thing. Besides that, people don't always realize this was written as a stage play, and that we had to take the orchestra into consideration as a full new band member, so to say. There's a big story (and I don't mean the story that's being told) behind this album, and I also realize people don't take the time to find out everything behind it of course. I found only one review which actually stated it as a musical (which it, in it's core, is).

But there are a lot of positive reactions, and everybody agrees that this is an ambitious project which was executed very well, and nobody claims it is just "another rock-opera", so that feels as an accomplishment in itself.

USAProgMusic: Will Equilibrio be performed on stage in the USA? Is there any talk of a tour?

Ivo:We would love to do that, but there is no talk whatsoever of performing Equilibrio abroad. This was a very expensive project, and a very big party would have to step in to make this happen again. We will do our best of course to play as much of these shows in the future, but coordination and finances for this are incredibly hard. Don't forget the 4 days we played in Holland took almost 2 years and half a million Euros. People will have to settle with the DVD if they want to see the stage performance for now, and we are working and making the show "mobile". And of course we are always looking for shows or tours where we can tag along with.

USAProgMusic: Talk a little bit about the new DVD. What can one expect from it?  Is this going to be released in the USA?

Ivo:The DVD has been shot with 8 cameras and captures what Equilibrio truly is: A full theater production with band, orchestra, choir and cast. Besides the songs that appear on the album, there will be an additional 5 songs that complete the story, you will also hear new choir arrangements and some new orchestral arrangements. It has both a stereo and 4.1 mix (we decided to go for something different from the "band in front, crowd in back" 5.1 mix you normally hear), has a "making of/backstage" 30 min. feature, a photo gallery, and of course it comes with 2 CDs with the full show on it. The official release date has been set on January 11th, but we've already started taking pre-orders through www.equilibriodvd.com.

USAProgMusic: How would you explain to someone how your rock opera is different from others out there?  How do you set yourself apart from projects where numerous guest artists and symphonic metal are used, like Ayreon? 

Ivo: I think the most important difference is that we wrote Equilibrio as a stage play, and had to live up to a certain balance which we wanted to maintain between the band and the orchestra. There aren't that many rock-operas where the orchestra is playing ALL the time. 

We also incorporated a lot of themes, like in a movie score. Every character has its own theme, and if you hear the complete opera you will probably recognize all of these theme in relation to it's character. We even made a huge schedule about what themes could intertwine with each other, and where we would use which one. I don't think you hear this approach very often, if there are rock-operas that do this, I would love to hear it.

Also, Ayreon for example, uses a lot of characters, whereas we decided to keep the cast to a minimum, and had the opportunity to create "round" characters.

USAProgMusic: Will you have any desire to do another rock opera?  If so, would it be some kind of continuation of the same story or a completely different one?  

Ivo: Yes we have several ideas for a new rock-opera, but it will not be a continuation of the same story line. In fact, it will be totally different from what Equilibrio is. Since these are all "ideas" at the moment, I really don't want to let go too much. We will first do a "normal" Xystus album before we will start work on this. But lots of ideas are on the shelf, that's for sure.

USAProgMusic: Are there any musicians you’d like to work with that you haven’t worked with yet? 

Ivo: Numerous! But hey, we're just a band from Holland, and we're still making a name for ourselves. We dropped a lot of names when working on Equilibrio which we would have loved to have in the cast as well: Roy Khan, Russell Allen, Jorn Lande, Tarja Turunnen, etc. I would also love to have Michael Romeo do some solos and have Jens Johansson do some synth solos... Maybe in the future these people will know who we are and would like to participate in a project, but for now we'll just be a band and perform these songs live. Simone and George are tagging along on some of the shows we are doing, and that's awesome!

USAProgMusic:  Thanks for taking the time, Ivo, to answer my questions. Good luck with your next project!