Today, I was at the kick-off of a new program for music education for elementary school children. The program is based on an English system that teaches children from 4 years of age about the essence of music. One of the reasons I was there was because I managed to contribute a substantial amount of…
Instead of a concert in the Concertgebouw or the new Muziekgebouw on the IJ, I wanted to do something that would be a little bit more spectacular. My eyes fell upon Schiphol Airport. What could be more spectacular than having an entire day of performances spread throughout the airport celebrating one hundred years of Dutch…
In the process of composing my new piece ‘Visions of the Cosmos’ Sometimes composing can take you on a far journey. I decided to write ‘Visions of the Cosmos‘, a piece about the history of how man viewed the place of the earth in the universe, starting with Aristotle to Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo and finally…
On the evening of her abdication, it would only seem fitting for a small homage to Queen Beatrix’s appreciation of Dutch classical music. On September 3rd 2011, the Genootschap van Nederlandse Componisten (Dutch Composers’ Guild) celebrated their centennial in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Special guest was Her Majesty Beatrix Queen of the Netherlands. As Chairman of…
Recently, my violin sonata “Soaring” had its premiere in Amsterdam. A video registration of one of the concerts can now be watched on this blog:
Thursday morning, the news reached me that a Dutch colleague of mine had passed away. Even though Otto Ketting was 77 years old, the news saddened me. I knew Otto personally since about 1988, when we were in a project together. He was a funny guy, both in the sense that he had an interesting…
