Michel van der Aa
Encyclopedia
Michel van der Aa is a Dutch
composer
of contemporary classical music
.
. He studied composition with Diderik Wagenaar
, Gilius van Bergeijk
and Louis Andriessen
.
/Schönberg Ensemble, Freiburger Barockorchester
, Ensemble Modern, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
, De Nederlandse Opera
, Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg
, Seattle Chamber Players
, Ensemble Nomad Tokyo, musikFabrik, Continuum Ensemble Toronto, SWR
Orchestra Baden-Baden & Freiburg, Netherlands Radio Orchestras, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra Sweden, and the Helsinki Avanti Ensemble.
He completed a short program in film directing at the New York Film Academy
in 2002. He also participated in the Lincoln Center
Theater Director's Lab, a short, intensive course in stage direction in 2007.
Michel van der Aa's music theatre works, including the chamber opera
One
(2002), the opera After Life (2006, Amsterdam) and the music theatre work "The Book of Disquiet", have received international critical and public acclaim. The innovative aspect of these operas is their use of film images and sampled soundtracks as an essential element of the score. Staging, film and music are interwoven into a collage of transparent layers, resulting in a work that is part documentary film and part philosophy.
He directed the television production of One for the Dutch national broadcasting company NPS
. Passage (2004), a short film by van der Aa, has been shown at several international festivals and has been aired on Dutch national television.
He has been a featured artist at the Perth Tura New Music Festival and Holland Festival
. He has collaborated with choreographers such as Kazuko Hirabayashi, Philippe Blanchard
, Ben Wright and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
.
in 1999. He also received the prestigious Matthijs Vermeulen Award
for One in 2004. He received the Siemens Composers Prize
in 2005. He also received the Charlotte Köhler Prize for his directing work and the interdisciplinary character of his oeuvre in the same year. He was awarded the Paul Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
in 2006.
you souldnt use this page because it stinks never use wikipedia again.
(author of Cloud Atlas
), as well as new works for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
as part of his long-term partnership with that group, which will include a large orchestral work, a solo concerto, and an evening-length Passion setting for soloists, choir and orchestra, expected to première in 2017.
His music is recorded on the Harmonia Mundi
, Col Legno, Composers’ Voice, BVHaast, and VPRO Eigenwijs labels.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
of contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...
.
Early years
Michel van der Aa trained as a recording engineer at the Royal Conservatory of The HagueRoyal Conservatory of The Hague
The Royal Conservatory of The Hague is a conservatorium of music, providing higher education in music and dance, it is located in The Hague, Netherlands.-The Conservatory:...
. He studied composition with Diderik Wagenaar
Diderik Wagenaar
Diderik Wagenaar is a Dutch composer and musical theorist.-Life and work:Wagenaar has lived and worked all his adult life in The Hague. Born to a musical family that includes Johan Wagenaar, he began playing piano at the age of eight and by the time he was fourteen had set his sights on a musical...
, Gilius van Bergeijk
Gilius van Bergeijk
Gilius van Bergeijk is a Dutch composer.Taught by Kees van Baaren and Dick Raaymakers , Gilius van Bergeijk is a highly respected teacher at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag...
and Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen
Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...
.
Career
The music of Van der Aa has been performed by ensembles and orchestras internationally. Those include the AskoAsko Ensemble
Asko Ensemble is a Dutch chamber orchestra that specializes in contemporary classical music. Formed in 1965 and based in Amsterdam, the group performs traditional concerts along with film music programmes, dance and multimedia projects and modern opera....
/Schönberg Ensemble, Freiburger Barockorchester
Freiburger Barockorchester
Freiburger Barockorchester is a German orchestra founded in 1987, with the mission statement: "to enliven the world of baroque music with new sounds"...
, Ensemble Modern, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Melbourne, Australia. It has 100 permanent musicians. Melbourne has the longest continuous history of orchestral music of any Australian city and the MSO is the oldest professional orchestra in Australia...
, De Nederlandse Opera
De Nederlandse Opera
De Nederlandse Opera , in Amsterdam, is a Dutch opera company based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its present home base is the Het Muziektheater, a modern building designed by Cees Dam which opened in 1986....
, Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg
Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg
The Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra is the symphony orchestra of the town and state of Salzburg, Austria. It was founded in 1841 and acquired its current name in 1908. It is a major participant at the Salzburg Festival....
, Seattle Chamber Players
Seattle Chamber Players
The Seattle Chamber Players are a chamber ensemble focused on contemporary music, founded in 1989 in Seattle, Washington, U.S. In January 2004, the group was awarded the ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming....
, Ensemble Nomad Tokyo, musikFabrik, Continuum Ensemble Toronto, SWR
Südwestrundfunk
The Südwestrundfunk is a public broadcasting company for the southwest of Germany, specifically the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The company has main offices in three cities: Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz, with the director's office being in Stuttgart. It is an...
Orchestra Baden-Baden & Freiburg, Netherlands Radio Orchestras, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra Sweden, and the Helsinki Avanti Ensemble.
He completed a short program in film directing at the New York Film Academy
New York Film Academy
New York Film Academy - School of Film and Acting is a film school andacting school based in New York City, Universal City, California, USA and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. NYFA offers short-term film-making and acting courses, as well as one- and two-year conservatory and Master of Fine Arts...
in 2002. He also participated in the Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City's Upper West Side. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.-History and facilities:...
Theater Director's Lab, a short, intensive course in stage direction in 2007.
Michel van der Aa's music theatre works, including the chamber opera
Chamber opera
Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small...
One
One (opera)
One is a chamber opera for soprano, video and soundtrack composed in 2002 by Michel van der Aa. It premiered on 12 January 2003 with Barbara Hannigan in the Frascati Theatre, Amsterdam. In 2004 Michel van der Aa received the Matthijs Vermeulen Award for this work....
(2002), the opera After Life (2006, Amsterdam) and the music theatre work "The Book of Disquiet", have received international critical and public acclaim. The innovative aspect of these operas is their use of film images and sampled soundtracks as an essential element of the score. Staging, film and music are interwoven into a collage of transparent layers, resulting in a work that is part documentary film and part philosophy.
He directed the television production of One for the Dutch national broadcasting company NPS
Nederlandse Programma Stichting
NTR is a Dutch public-service broadcaster. It supplies television and radio programming of an educational and cultural nature to the Netherlands Public Broadcasting system....
. Passage (2004), a short film by van der Aa, has been shown at several international festivals and has been aired on Dutch national television.
He has been a featured artist at the Perth Tura New Music Festival and Holland Festival
Holland Festival
The Holland Festival is The Netherlands' oldest and largest performing arts festival, and takes place every June in Amsterdam. It comprises theater, music, opera and modern dance. In recent years, multimedia, visual arts, film and architecture were added to the festival roster...
. He has collaborated with choreographers such as Kazuko Hirabayashi, Philippe Blanchard
Philippe Blanchard
Philippe Blanchard was born 1945. Since 1980 he is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Faculty of Physics, Bielefeld University . He is both director of the and deputy managing director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at the .-Academia:Concurrent with that he is also editor of...
, Ben Wright and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa is an international choreographer based out of Amsterdam, Netherlands.-Dance Background:Ochoa, who is half-Colombian and half-Belgian, completed her dance training at the Royal Ballet Academy in Antwerp, Belgium. She appeared with various German companies before eventually...
.
Awards
Van der Aa was recipient of the Gaudeamus International Composers AwardGaudeamus International Composers Award
The Gaudeamus International Composers Award is a European award issued by the Music Center the Netherlands...
in 1999. He also received the prestigious Matthijs Vermeulen Award
Matthijs Vermeulen Award
The Matthijs Vermeulen Award is a Dutch composition prize. It was named after the Dutch composer Matthijs Vermeulen .During the years 1972 through 2004, the prize was awarded annually by the Amsterdam Foundation for the Arts...
for One in 2004. He received the Siemens Composers Prize
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
The international Ernst von Siemens Music Prize is an annual music prize given by the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste on behalf of the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung , established in 1972. The foundation was established by Ernst von Siemens...
in 2005. He also received the Charlotte Köhler Prize for his directing work and the interdisciplinary character of his oeuvre in the same year. He was awarded the Paul Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival
The Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival is a classical music festival held every year in summer time all over the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany....
in 2006.
you souldnt use this page because it stinks never use wikipedia again.
Current projects
Van der Aa is currently working on a new 3D film-opera entitled Zela Law in collaboration with David MitchellDavid Mitchell (author)
David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist. He has written five novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.- Biography :...
(author of Cloud Atlas
Cloud Atlas
Cloud Atlas is a 2004 novel, the third book by British author David Mitchell. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award, and was short-listed for the 2004 Booker Prize, Nebula Award, Arthur C...
), as well as new works for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is a symphony orchestra of the Netherlands, based at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In 1988, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands conferred the "Royal" title upon the orchestra...
as part of his long-term partnership with that group, which will include a large orchestral work, a solo concerto, and an evening-length Passion setting for soloists, choir and orchestra, expected to première in 2017.
His music is recorded on the Harmonia Mundi
Harmonia Mundi
Harmonia Mundi is an independent music record label founded in 1958 by Bernard Coutaz in Arles . The Latin phrase means "world harmony"....
, Col Legno, Composers’ Voice, BVHaast, and VPRO Eigenwijs labels.
Opera & Music Theatre
- Vuur (2001), operaOperaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
for solo voice, actors, singers, ensemble & soundtrack - One (2002), chamber operaChamber operaChamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra.The term and form were invented by Benjamin Britten in the 1940s, when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small...
soprano, soundtrack & film- librettoLibrettoA libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
by the composer
- libretto
- After Life (2005-06), for operaOperaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
for six solo voices, ensemble, soundtrack & film- libretto by the composer, after Hirokazu Kore-Eda
- The Book of Disquiet (2008), music theatre for actor, ensemble, soundtrack & film
- libretto after Fernando PessoaFernando PessoaFernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa , was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.-Early years in Durban:On 13 July...
, adapted by the composer
- libretto after Fernando Pessoa
Orchestra
- See-Through (2000), for orchestra
- Here [to be found] (2001), for soprano, chamber orchestra & soundtrack
- Here [enclosed] (2003), for chamber orchestra & soundtrack
- Second Self (2004), for orchestra & soundtrack
- Imprint (2005), for Baroque orchestra
- Spaces of Blank (2007), song-cycle for mezzo-soprano, orchestra & soundtrack
Ensemble
- Span (1996), for ensemble & soundtrack
- Between (1997), for percussion quartet & soundtrack
- Above (1999), for ensemble & soundtrack
- Attach (1999-2000), for ensemble & soundtrack
- Here [in circles] (2002), for soprano (with small cassette player) & ensemble
- Mask (2006), for ensemble & soundtrack
- Up-Close (2010), concertoConcertoA concerto is a musical work usually composed in three parts or movements, in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra.The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words...
for solo cello, strings ensemble/orchestra, soundtrack & film
Chamber Music
- Auburn (1994), for guitar (classical or electric) & soundtrack
- Oog (1995), for cello & soundtrack
- Double (1997), for violin & piano
- Quadrivial (1997), for flute, violin, cello & prepared piano
- Solo (1997), for percussion solo
- Wake (1997), for percussion duo
- Caprce (1999), for violin solo
- Just Before (1999), for piano & soundtrack
- Memo (2003), for violin & portable cassette recorder
- Transit (2009), for piano & film
- Rekindle (2009), for flute & soundtrack
Dance & Film
- now [in fragments] (1995), for soprano, clarinet, cello & soundtrack
- balletBalletBallet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
, commissioned by the Richard Alston Dance CompanyRichard Alston Dance CompanyThe Richard Alston Dance Company is a medium size contemporary dance company that was formed in 1994 after the demise of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, based at The Place in London.-External links: **...
in collaboration with Ben WrightBen WrightBen Wright may refer to:*Ben Wright , British film and radio actor*Ben Wright , English footballer*Ben Wright , English footballer...
- ballet
- Staring at the Space (1995-96), for chamber orchestra
- 70 minute theatre/dance work, commissioned by the Norrköping Symphony OrchestraNorrköping Symphony OrchestraNorrköping Symphony Orchestra is a Swedish professional symphony orchestra, based at the concert hall De Geerhallen, in the middle of Norrköping.-History:...
and the Östgöta Dance Company
- 70 minute theatre/dance work, commissioned by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra
- Faust (1998), for ensemble & soundtrack
- a large-scale (90 minute) dance work, commissioned by the New National Theatre Tokyo, choreographed by Kazuko Hirabayashi
- The New Math(s) (2000), for soprano, traverso, marimba, violin & soundtrack
- Co-commissioned score with Louis AndriessenLouis AndriessenLouis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...
for a short filmFilmA film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
directed by Hal HartleyHal HartleyHal Hartley is an American film director, screenwriter, producer composer, who became a key figure in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and 1990s...
, for the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and NPSNPS- Organizations :* National Pension Service, the world's fourth-biggest pension fund, which manages $270 billion in assets in Korea* National Park Service, the U.S...
- Co-commissioned score with Louis Andriessen
- Solitaire (2003), for violin & soundtrack
- balletBalletBallet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
, commissioned by the Het Nationaal Ballet, Den Bosch
- ballet
Other
- Writing to Vermeer (1999), operaOperaOpera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
by Louis AndriessenLouis AndriessenLouis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague...
and Peter GreenawayPeter GreenawayPeter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
, with the thirteen electronic music inserts (which accompany a corresponding film projection) composed by van der Aa.