Merlijn Twaalfhoven
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Merlijn Twaalfhoven (Wapserveen, the Netherlands, February 14, 1976) is a Dutch composer and theatre director
[edit] Biography and Artistic vision
Even before graduating from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam Merlijn Twaalfhoven was predisposed to alternative concert locations: A shipyard in Amsterdam harbour, an old warehouse, sand dunes.
Ever since, the young Dutchman regularly creates a stir with his special projects outside of the regular concerts on offer, whereby he likes to appeal to all of the observer's senses. The latest example is the yearly happening La Nuit n'est pas une chocolat, a tightly directed spectacle in which contemporary music, theatre and cookery fuse with a dance event. Twaalfhoven: “I think the world around us is a limitless source of beauty and wonder; it is a matter of perception whether we see it or not. I experimented much with events outside the usual concert setting and the connection of composed modern music with daily live. In this I am influenced by my research into Japanese aestatics. My ambition is to distort the basic suppositions of live as being just an ordinary sequence of events, and to widen our personal view by the experience of ordinary magic of the world around us.
I realise that, as a composer I'm responsible not only for the notes on the musicians stands but for the entire experience of the spectators. Space and sound are inseparable and the visual always influences the aural'. This basic assumption has sent him on a quest for the unity of sound and space and the organic place for an audience within it. Wandering mostly in outer musical fields, collaborating with visual artists, choreographers and directors comes to him as a matter of course.
Twaalfhoven's latest project took him to Cyprus, where musicians from both the North and the South side performed on rooftops to bridge the bufferzone that is deviding the island. His work has won him several prizes in the Netherlands and abroad, it can be heard regularly on radio and it is performed by orchestras both national and international.
As a professor in “Pop Kunst” at ArtEZ school of arts in The Netherlands, he researches how artists can reach a new and diverse public without giving up their artistic vision and ideas. He is himself striving to accomplish this in his projects with his foundation La Vie Sur Terre and in cooperative projects with, among others, Theatre Group Amsterdam, Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, the Dutch national Ballet and the Springdance Festival. He has also produced numerous projects on location with local musicians in Central Europe, Cyprus and Japan.
