Shelter

The first single from the new album ‘Time Falling’, out on 28 February 2020 on Disquiet Media
http://timefalling.com/

The Aleph (ft Kate Miller-Heidke)

Excerpt from interactive song cycle "The Book of Sand"

Listen, watch and interact with the full song cycle at: www.thebookofsand.net

19th step, a-cappella (ft Kate Miller-Heidke, Nederlands Kamerkoor)

Asterion (ft Kate Miller-Heidke)

Excerpt from interactive song cycle "The Book of Sand"

Kate Miller-Heidke
Nederlandse Kamerkoor, conductor - MaNOj Kamps

Listen, watch and interact with the full song cycle at: www.thebookofsand.net

Asterion, a-cappella(ft Kate Miller-Heidke, Nederlands Kamerkoor)

excerpt from 'Blank Out'
chamber opera for soprano, baritone, choir and 3D film


Blank Out - scene 5D

excerpt from "Blank Out"
chamber opera for soprano, baritone, choir and 3D film

Roderick Williams, baritone
Nederlands Kamerkoor, conducted by Klaas Stok

Blank Out - On all faces

for orchestra and soundtrack (2004)

SWR orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, cond. Roland Kluttig

Second Self

for orchestra (2000)

Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Micha Hamel

See-through [excerpt]

Opera (2005-2006)

first memory aria
Yvette Bonner, soprano
ASKO|Schönberg, Otto Tausk, cond.

After Life

music from the Virtual Reality installation 'Eight': http://eightvr.net
featuring Kate Miller-Heidke, and the Nederlands Kamerkoor

music & lyrics: Michel van der Aa
produced & mixed by Thijs de Vlieger (Thys)

Mirrors at Night (feat. Kate Miller-Heidke)

for mezzo-soprano, violin, piano and double bass (2012)
words by Carol Ann Duffy

Christianne Stotijn, mezzo-soprano
Janine Jansen, violin
Jendrik Springer, piano
Rick Stotijn, double bass

Live recording International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht
http://www.vanderaa.net/milesaway

Miles Away

Michel van der Aa (Netherlands, 1970) is a truly multidisciplinary figure in contemporary music. A unique voice, he combines composition with film and stage direction, and script writing. Classical instruments, voices, electronic sound, actors, theatre and video are all seamless extensions of his musical vocabulary.

Before studying composition (with Diderik Wagenaar, Gilius van Bergeijk and Louis Andriessen), Van der Aa trained first as a recording engineer at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. In 2002 he broadened his skills with studies in film direction, at the New York Film Academy, and in 2007 he participated in the Lincoln Center Theater Director’s Lab, an intensive course in stage direction.

Van der Aa’s musical materials are hard to tease apart, constantly switching between stasis and high energy, concrete and abstract, acoustic and electronic, ‘pure’ and processed, brand new and half-remembered. Many of them are as visual as they are aural. The possibilities of digital and audio- visual technology often feature, not as a surface gloss to his work but at the core of his artistic outlook.

Another important aspect to Van der Aa’s is collaboration and interdisciplinarity. He has worked with leading classical performers such as Sol Gabetta, Barbara Hannigan,Janine Jansen, Christianne Stotijn and Roderick Williams, as well as the Portuguese fado singer Ana Moura, pop acts Kate Miller-Heidke and These New Puritans, and well-known European actors like Klaus Maria Brandauer, Samuel West and João Reis.

His music has been performed by ensembles and orchestras worldwide, including musikFabrik , ICE, Tokyo Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Chamber Players, SWR orchestra Baden-Baden & Freiburg, the ASKO|Schoenberg ensemble, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Phiharmonia Orchestra London and the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra.
He has been a featured artist at the Perth Tura New Music Festival and Holland Festival. He is a regular guest of the Berliner Festspiele, Venice Biennale, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Gaudeamus Music Week, Opera de Lyon, Huddersfield Festival and Warsaw Autumn. Additionally his compositions have been performed at the Festival d’Automne à Paris, LA Philharmonic New Music Series, Lucerne Festival, Tokyo Suntory Summer Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, Moscow Music Week and Oslo Ultima Festival.

Van der Aa has won acclaim for his multimedia works for the stage and concert hall (not only the operas One, After Life and The Book of Disquiet, but also Up-Close, and Transit for piano and video). He has directed both the filmed and staged elements of all of these works. His operas have been staged in more than a dozen countries, with After Life andThe Book of Disquiet being regularly revived.

In 1999 Michel Van der Aa was the first Dutch composer to win the prestigious International Gaudeamus Prize. Subsequent awards include the Matthijs Vermeulen prize (2004), a Siemens Composers Grant (2005), the Charlotte Köhler Prize for his directing work and the interdisciplinary character of his oeuvre (2005), the Paul Hindemith Prize (2006), and the Kagel Prize (2013). Michel van der Aa has won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his multimedia work Up-Close. In 2015 Michel van der Aa has been awarded the prestigious Johannes Vermeer Award, the Dutch state prize for the arts.


Michel van der Aa

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