There has been a storm brewing in the music community in the Netherlands over the last several months surrounding the recent publication of the four-year subsidy report of the Nederlands Fonds voor Podiumkunsten.  The committee of the NFPK+ is the group of people that decide who gets subsidized over the next four years and who doesn’t.  During this round, many of the nation’s top ensembles got considerably less than they requested, and some vital small to mid-level groups had their funding cut entirely.  The area of new music was hardest hit, with around half of the groups who had applied or, in most cases, re-applied for funding, being completely cut off.  The general consensus is that none of the committee members are qualified to judge artistic product.  Who selected the committee members?  No one knows.  The results were announced deep in the August holiday when most Nederlanders are out of the country, swatting flies on Spanish campsites.  In addition, the NFPK+ report states that “the recommendations themselves cannot be reviewed, only the process.”  In other words:  don’t even think about protesting.  It’s disturbing to think that a country with such a well-developed, diverse, and internationally-recognized ensemble and new-music culture could, with a flick of the political wrist, find itself with only two or three viable new-music ensembles, whose directors will be rendered skittish and conservative, whipped as they are by the rank prevailing winds of “revitalization” and “renewal”....