reality living truth realising sound scape 

Happy that I can make music. Here are my solo projects Ciapo, Spinner, Distiller and many others.

Niels van der Leest (born in Enschede on October 22 1976) studied classical percussion on the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam.
During and after getting his Master degree Niels played in some of the best orchestras in Holland and was a player in the successful percussion group Circle Percussion.

Niels is still playing in AbSurdo (THE samba group of Holland), teaches percussion on a couple of music schools and conducts a percussion group in Houten, Holland.

After some years of performing as a professional percussionist Niels decides to listen to his urge to write down his musical ideas instead of only playing the notes someone else wrote. His biggest dream being: writing the music to a computer game.
His love for the medium games started when he played Final Fantasy VII, which was accompanied by music of the Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu. 

Niels is working on fulfilling his dreams and starts arranging and remixing game music for his percussion students. When his arrangements are played with lots of fun, the performances lead to enthusiastic reactions and more requests for “his” music start coming in he starts writing original music.
In 2007 Niels won the publics prize in the Interface SoundGame Contest with 46,4% of the votes. 

In the course of the years Niels has worked on a lot of award winning games, commissioned works, tracks for commercials and sing-a-song writers and of course his solo albums.

Niels has proven to be a market-oriented composer, arranger and sound designer, with high quality, professionalism and originality as his top priorities.


“Writing to enhance instead of distract”

Playful beats, accompanied by a velvet voice singing catchy melodies without lyrics. 

Come and enjoy this uncommon music on our veranda. Groovy mellow beats accompanied by a velvet voice singing catchy melodies without lyrics. De-stress from the world that’s full of words and talk, because as Jobim said in his one note samba “there’s so many people that just talk and talk and talk and just say nothing, or nearly nothing” and slip into a universal global world without lyrics where everybody can understand everybody, or to quote Stevie Wonder “music is a world within itself with a language we all understand.

Followers of Da Veranda