Under construction: Piano Concerto
April 2008 / Clearing the schedule to work on only one piece for a year: a dream come true!
Thanks to a commission by the Zaterdagmatinee for a piano concerto for Ralph van Raat and the Radio Kamer Filharmonie, most of 2008 will be dedicated to writing this large scale concerto. As sketching is turning into real shapes and sounds, as can be seen from the picture, stay tuned for more news from the trenches of the work space. Meanwhile, check out the website of multi-talented piano virtuoso Ralph van Raat by clicking the link below.
Link to Ralph van Raat's website
November Music
November 2007 / The last edition of the November Music Festival featured a program of Giel Vleggaar's music on Sunday the 18th of November, in the Verkadefabriek in Den Bosch. Esteemed performers such as Frank Wingold, Nederlands Vocaal Laboratorium and the Nieuw Ensemble performed exciting and haunting pieces, including the world premières of Drowning for 5 singers, and Atomic UFO Saves the Day for bass guitar and ensemble. The program also featured video animation by British illustrator Nikalas Catlow.
Link to the November Music Website
Selected for 2007 International Rostrum of Composers
June 2007 / Giel Vleggaar's work Appalachia has been placed on the Recommended Works List of the International Music Council. The 54th International Rostrum of Composers (IRC) took place at the Maison de la Radio in Paris, June 5 to 9, 2007, organised by the International Music Council in cooperation with Radio France and with the financial support of UNESCO. Giel Vleggaar joins the ranks of the 2007 International Rostrum of Composers with the same piece that won the Henriette Bosmans Prize earlier this year.
More information at http://www.unesco.org/imc/.
Learn more about Appalachia
Giel Vleggaar wins Henriette Bosmans Prijs 2007 for Appalachia
February 2007 / Giel Vleggaar's bluegrass exploration Appalachia won the Henriette Bosmansprijs 2007. Ensemble Insomnio performed the work in a concert on the 16th of February with soloist Wiek Hijmans. Appalachia was commissioned by the Nieuw Ensemble in 2004, and was also well-received at the Gaudemus Music Week Festival that same year. Some quotes from the press after the première in 2004:
"Giel Vleggaar... mixed American bluegrass-music with modern compositional techniques and bebop into an energetic, at times explosive piece"
(Winand van de Kamp, Haagsche Courant)
"The soloist in this piece is an escaped bluegrass guitarist, steel strings and all. Typical guitaristic licks and riffs seep through into the ensemble texture, or serve to accompany long melodic lines in an atmosphere that moves back and forth between repetitive stillness and avant-garde rodeo"
(Jochem Valkenburg, NRC Handelsblad)
"Virtuosic, remarkably supple sounding music that showcases great inventiveness"
(Gerard van der Leeuw, ArtEz)
Learn more about Appalachia
Dead as Disco
January 2007 / On February 16th, 2007 the Radio Kamer Filharmonie premièred Giel Vleggaar's new orchestra piece 'Dead as Disco'. The performance was part of the 'Jong Oranje' project, where 5 young composers were asked to write a piece for orchestra and present them in a dedicated evening program during the Nederlandse Muziekdagen. The concert also featured pieces by Ned McGowan, Joey Roukens, Lars Skoglund and Daan Verlaan. The orchestra was conducted by Otto Tausk.
Dead as Disco is an exhubarant piece, a loving treatment of disco that describes the transformation of the genre as it slowly went extinct during the early 1980's. Using a sweeping mix of the musical languages of disco and contemporary music, Dead as Disco foreshadows the doom and gloom of the nineteen-eighties glimpsed at the end of the upbeat seventies.
Press quote:
"Giel Vleggaar... set the hall on fire. Dead as Disco moves back and forth with virtuosity between hopscotch Stravinsky, Barry White-esque soul and the tight rhythmic feel of dance music. A true find is the ending, where music and lighting fade out in one fluent motion. "
(Guido van Oorschot, De Volkskrant, February 19th 2007)
Learn more about Dead as Disco
Up and Away premiere
July 2006 / On Friday, the 21st of July the Nederlands Strijkers Gilde premiered Up and Away for string orchestra, conducted by Bas Wiegers.
Up and Away borrows its motto from a song of the soundtrack of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from 2004. Just like the main characters in this film, Up and Away illustrates the desire to escape: a relentless movement upwards to freedom, away from reality. But there is no place to run to. Every ascent lands in the same place, a fun-house mirror where the one reflected is only distorted momentarily, but fundamentally cannot change. Stasis within motion, a hamster in a wheel: Up and Away confronts listeners with the constancy of being no matter how high they might fly or how far they might run.
Up and Away was composed with financial support from Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst and is published by Donemus.
Learn more about Up and Away
Come Here Often? Released on CD
July 2006 / Duo Vertigo released their debut CD Vertigo One on Karnatic Lab Records, featuring among others the percussion duo + tape piece 'Come Here Often?' by Giel Vleggaar.
Over the past few years, award-winning Duo Vertigo has become famous for its riveting and energetic performances, inspiring the creation of imaginative and innovative new works by composers from all over the world. This disc of world premiere recordings offers a selection of the strongest, strangest and most gripping of those pieces, including urban tunes, exotic sound fields, labyrinthine toccatas and sexy pick-up lines...
Vertigo One can be ordered from the Karnatic Lab Records website: www.karnaticlabrecords.com
Learn more about Come Here Often?
Wiek Hijmans takes Aiming for Ecstasy on the road
March 2006 / After having succesfully collaborated with Wiek Hijmans on Appalachia for the Nieuw Ensemble in 2004, Giel Vleggaar composed Aiming for Ecstasy as a challenge from Wiek to write a piece for electric guitar solo. The resulting composition draws from a wide array of influences. Whether it is a chord progression from an unreleased Prince-song called 'Wonderful Ass', an early Renaissance fauxbourdon harmonisation technique, or a palindromic number series, this piece presents a distinct sound world that emphasises a recurrent theme in the composer's work: bringing together seemingly unrelated musical scenarios.
Wiek Hijmans will be performing Aiming for Ecstasy during a spring 2006 solo tour in the Netherlands, Russia and Germany.
Learn more about Aiming for Ecstasy
Come Here Often? Choreography
December 2005 / Thom Stuart has created a choreography on the succesful percussion-duo piece 'Come Here Often?' for dancer Sabrina Vis, which was premiered at the last night of the Holland Dance Festival on November 13, 2005 in Den Haag, the Netherlands. Sabrina will be performing the solo in venues in Amsterdam in December 2005, and then take it to New York and Hawaii in February and March 2006.
Come Here Often? featuring Sabrina Vis and the de Vrees Brothers percussion duo can be booked through De Dutch Don't Dance Division.
Learn more about Come Here Often?
 |
Thanks to a commission by the Zaterdagmatinee for a piano concerto for Ralph van Raat and the Radio Kamer Filharmonie, most of 2008 will be dedicated to writing this large scale concerto. As sketching is turning into real shapes and sounds, as can be seen from the picture, stay tuned for more news from the trenches of the work space. Meanwhile, check out the website of multi-talented piano virtuoso Ralph van Raat by clicking the link below.
Link to Ralph van Raat's website
November Music
 |
Link to the November Music Website
Selected for 2007 International Rostrum of Composers
 |
More information at http://www.unesco.org/imc/.
Learn more about Appalachia
Giel Vleggaar wins Henriette Bosmans Prijs 2007 for Appalachia
 |
| Ensemble Insomnio |
"Giel Vleggaar... mixed American bluegrass-music with modern compositional techniques and bebop into an energetic, at times explosive piece"
(Winand van de Kamp, Haagsche Courant)
"The soloist in this piece is an escaped bluegrass guitarist, steel strings and all. Typical guitaristic licks and riffs seep through into the ensemble texture, or serve to accompany long melodic lines in an atmosphere that moves back and forth between repetitive stillness and avant-garde rodeo"
(Jochem Valkenburg, NRC Handelsblad)
"Virtuosic, remarkably supple sounding music that showcases great inventiveness"
(Gerard van der Leeuw, ArtEz)
Learn more about Appalachia
Dead as Disco
 |
Dead as Disco is an exhubarant piece, a loving treatment of disco that describes the transformation of the genre as it slowly went extinct during the early 1980's. Using a sweeping mix of the musical languages of disco and contemporary music, Dead as Disco foreshadows the doom and gloom of the nineteen-eighties glimpsed at the end of the upbeat seventies.
Press quote:
"Giel Vleggaar... set the hall on fire. Dead as Disco moves back and forth with virtuosity between hopscotch Stravinsky, Barry White-esque soul and the tight rhythmic feel of dance music. A true find is the ending, where music and lighting fade out in one fluent motion. "
(Guido van Oorschot, De Volkskrant, February 19th 2007)
Learn more about Dead as Disco
Up and Away premiere
 |
| © Photo by Magda Bukowska |
Up and Away borrows its motto from a song of the soundtrack of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from 2004. Just like the main characters in this film, Up and Away illustrates the desire to escape: a relentless movement upwards to freedom, away from reality. But there is no place to run to. Every ascent lands in the same place, a fun-house mirror where the one reflected is only distorted momentarily, but fundamentally cannot change. Stasis within motion, a hamster in a wheel: Up and Away confronts listeners with the constancy of being no matter how high they might fly or how far they might run.
Up and Away was composed with financial support from Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst and is published by Donemus.
Learn more about Up and Away
Come Here Often? Released on CD
 |
Over the past few years, award-winning Duo Vertigo has become famous for its riveting and energetic performances, inspiring the creation of imaginative and innovative new works by composers from all over the world. This disc of world premiere recordings offers a selection of the strongest, strangest and most gripping of those pieces, including urban tunes, exotic sound fields, labyrinthine toccatas and sexy pick-up lines...
Vertigo One can be ordered from the Karnatic Lab Records website: www.karnaticlabrecords.com
Learn more about Come Here Often?
Wiek Hijmans takes Aiming for Ecstasy on the road
 |
| Wiek Hijmans |
Wiek Hijmans will be performing Aiming for Ecstasy during a spring 2006 solo tour in the Netherlands, Russia and Germany.
Learn more about Aiming for Ecstasy
Come Here Often? Choreography
 |
| Sabrina Vis © Photo by Jan-Evert Zondag |
Come Here Often? featuring Sabrina Vis and the de Vrees Brothers percussion duo can be booked through De Dutch Don't Dance Division.
Learn more about Come Here Often?
>Next Concert
August 30th, 2008
Post Mortem
Summer Workshop HMGR
Cantus Ensemble / Vlatka Buric, mezzosoprano
International Cultural Centre of Jeunesses Musicales Croatia, Groznjan, Croatia
See Agenda
>Recent Works
Dead as Disco (2006)
U-Turn Addiction (2006)
Drowning (2006)
Aiming for Ecstasy (2005)
Up and Away (2005)
August 30th, 2008
Post Mortem
Summer Workshop HMGR
Cantus Ensemble / Vlatka Buric, mezzosoprano
International Cultural Centre of Jeunesses Musicales Croatia, Groznjan, Croatia
See Agenda
>Recent Works
Dead as Disco (2006)
U-Turn Addiction (2006)
Drowning (2006)
Aiming for Ecstasy (2005)
Up and Away (2005)