van der Aa on van der Aa

A 10-minute documentary on Dutch composer Michel van der Aa, centered around an interview filmed at his home in Amsterdam. The composer discusses the development of his innovative style, combining music and new media.

After studying music and recording technology in The Hague, Michel van der Aa took a year out to study film in New York, returning to Amsterdam to fuse the two artforms together in an imaginative sequence of music theatre works. Van der Aa has directed productions of his stageworks internationally, fusing contemporary music with the cutting edge of new media, so that video and electronic soundscapes become integral parts of the theatrical experience.

Michel van der Aa's sources of inspiration have ranged from Japanese cinema in his opera After Life, to the fragmented texts of Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet, and the inner anxiety of poems by Emily Dickinson, Rozalie Hirs and Anne Carson in the orchestral song-cycle Spaces of Blank.

This new film is presented by Boosey & Hawkes and directed  by Tommy Pearson of Red Ted Films.