News – Page 5 – Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk

A Dutch Composer in the Purcell Room at London’s South Bank Centre

may 2010 – After their Dutch tour Tom Kerstens and the Utrecht String Quartet played Over the Water at the London South Bank in the Purcell Room.

Dutch composer in London – Tom Kerstens and the G+ Ensemble play premiere of Over the Water at Kings Place Opening Festival

octobre 2008 – n the new Kings Place guitarist Tom Kerstens and the G+ ensemble played the premiere of my new piece Over the Water for guitar and string quartet..

Score of The Lamb & The Tyger (chamber choir SATB) now published

My short but very intense setting of William Blake’s famous poems has finally been published by Ascolta…

New music of all ages: La Fontegara on Tour Again

januari 2009 – ‘Early music’? Bollocks, music old and new of all ages…

Over the Water for guitar and string quartet

september 2007– I just finished Over the Water, a piece that took me a year to write…..

New recorder piece, with German publisher Edition Tre Fontane

Recorders without borders will be published by Tre Fontane…

Blake Settings now also SATB

The choral diptych The Lamb & The Tyger was recently performed in a new SATB version.

Things that went, things that keep coming…

In the year this website is in existence, I made quite some music, but much more is to come…

Praise for Vintage Brisk

The Netherland’s one and only classical cd-glossy Luister awarded Vintage Brisk its highest recommendation…

Vintage Brisk: all new, yet old, music

Globe Records just released the cd ‘Vintage Brisk: a selection of the new music the ensemble commissioned from Dutch composers in the past 20 years, including two pieces of mine…

About me

Musical beauty and simplicity are my aim. My guiding principle is the classical European tradition. Folk music, church music and Early Music are the sources to which I return to seek new melodic beauty. I value musical craftsmanship and intuition highly. Musicians are my first audience. It is their virtuosic interplay, comic or dramatic, but always emotionally charged, that is the musical theater my music presents to the listener. The sounds I cherish most are those that through the musician’s hearts, breath and hands bear the mark of their personal interpretation.
Chamber music is, therefore, central to me – I have written for the Bennewitz Quartet and Harry-Imre Dijkstra, the Skampa Quartet, Rosanne Philippens, the Bartók Trio, the Utrecht String Quartet and many others.
My chamber music for recorders has a special place in my work and is played in large numbers by amateurs. The CD Kadanza is a fruit of decades of collaboration with the best professionals who were often also the best teachers.
For me, choral music is also a species of chamber music. It should challenge and offer musical satisfaction to those many amateur singers – that I am one of.

My music features individual performers – to convey a thought, an emotion, and a story to the audience in a virtuoso and intense fashion.

In rehearsal and performance, the performers and I learn a lot from each other. Sometimes their improvisations are included in the musical story. Scores will always be adapted to their needs.

The interplay between performer and composer is absolutely essential in newly written music. As is the interplay between sponsor and composer.

Would you like me to rehearse with you or do you want to know more about a piece?

Do you want me to write a piece for a particular line-up or event?

Please let me know and I will contact you.

Besides composing, I lecture in New Music at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, with a focus on chamber music and music aesthetics. Some of the writing and thinking that I do there can be found in the ‘text’ section.