Lecture - Michel van der Aa

Michel van der Aa, winner of the 2015 Johannes Vermeer Award and 2013 Grawemeyer Award, is one of today’s most sought-after composers and stage directors. A pioneer in the realms of new music and technology, his staged works – incorporating film and sampled soundtrack – are a seamless hybrid of musical theatre and multimedia.
Van der Aa’s imaginative music theatre works Upload (2020), Eight (2019), Blank Out (2016), Sunken Garden (2012), The Book of Disquiet (2008), After Life (2006) and One (2002) have received critical and public acclaim internationally. Staging, film and music are interwoven into a collage of transparent layers, resulting in works that are part-documentary, part-philosophy.
Winner of numerous awards for his innovative work, Michel van der Aa is a regular guest of the world’s most prestigious festivals and concert halls including Barbican Centre, L’Opéra de Lyon, Park Avenue Armory, Berliner Festspiele, La Biennale di Venezia, Festival d’Aix-en- Provence, Beijing Music Festival, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Lincoln Centre Festival, Holland Festival, and Suntory Hall Summer Festival. In August 2017, van der Aa was composer-in-residence at Lucerne Festival.