Eva Hoogland is a singer of Turkish folk music and free improvisation music. She grew up in a musical environment as her father is the pianist Stanley Hoogland who was one of the first to perform on period instruments. She received her first music lessons at the age of five.
Eva’s Anatolian folk music repertoire comes from different regions and musical styles of Turkey, such as Rumeli and Zeybek, but she has a special affinity with East Anatolian songs. She studied Anatolian folk music at the Conservatory of Rotterdam with Kemal Dinc and Zeynel Demir.
Eva performs the music mostly in a traditional way, and researches the poetry of the songs she sings. She tries to give this poetry a prominent place in her interpretation, and is interested in differences between sung poetry interpretations, both religious as non religious, in different times and places of the world and of Turkey.
Eva does also find a contemporary approach by combining Anatolian music with free improvisation, but sometimes also completely turns to improvisation, as she improvises on the magnum opus of the Turkish composer Şevket Akıncı, the album Escher Chronicles.
From 2017 till 2019 she was the singer of the Turkish psychedelic funk folk band 69AY, that included saxophonist John Dikeman and guitarist Thijs Elzinga and which was founded by her brother Oscar Jan Hoogland.
Eva has performed with musicians such as Sevket Akinci, Barkin Engin, and Saadet Türköz, and performed at Doek festival twice, in 2018 at the Amsterdam Bimhuis with Amagi, a project formed by Wolter Wierbos. She sang with the Hezarfen Ensemble at Borusan Music House in Istanbul, and performed at EYE Film Museum for the exhibition Shell Shock. She collaborated with the multidisciplinary studio Nohlab in various performances, in Istanbul but also in Paris at L’Atelier des Lumières as part of the Immersive Art Festival, that took place on October 2019.
Further in 2019 she sung and was curator of BimLAB 41 together with Wim Janssen at the Amsterdam Bimhuis. Also that year and the following she was part of improvisation choir the 38th of August, founded by Laura Polence.
Recently there was more to explore, taking part in the video art of Pinar Akkurt, not only as a singer but also as a dancer/performance artist. The result was shown in Istanbul at the Vision Art Gallery in februari 2023.