KEES WIERINGA

Kees Wieringa

Over the years, Kees Wieringa has built an international career with his piano recitals and compositions. He is known as an advocate of the music of the Bergen composer Simeon ten Holt and the discoverer of music Jakob van Domselaar wrote in connection with De Stijl [The Style] movement in ...
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piano

Mentioned in the biography of

2001   Polo de Haas
2015   Polo de Haas

Biography Kees Wieringa

Over the years, Kees Wieringa has built an international career with his piano recitals and compositions. He is known as an advocate of the music of the Bergen composer Simeon ten Holt and the discoverer of music Jakob van Domselaar wrote in connection with De Stijl [The Style] movement in art. Wieringa is adventuresome: “If it says on top of a review 'Wieringa is a dependable pianist', he is appalled”. (de Volkskrant, December 20, 1996) Aside from performing in the famous concert halls of the Netherlands and abroad, he has with equal panache given concerts on a small island in Japan and a square in Bogotá with street children guaranteeing his safety. His repertoire, interpretations, programmes, and choice of musical partners show the same pioneering mentality.

1986

Kees Wieringa (1957) completes his piano studies with Gerben Makkes van der Deyl, Edith Lateiner-Grosz, Willem Brons, and Jan Marisse Huizing at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam.

Willem Brons

1988

He receives the prize for “original repertoire” at the Berlage Competition, where he plays Proeven van Stijlkunst [Experiments in the Art of Style, 1913-1917] by Jacob van Domselaer. The nine-composition work was performed by Van Domselaer himself and Nelly van Doesburg at Bauhaus get-togethers and DaDa evenings. It is unusual music written according to concepts of De Stijl movement in art.

Jakob van Domselaer

1990 - 1994

Wieringa gives master classes at Turkish conservatories. He later begins a duo with the cellist René Bergman and together they win the Orpheus Competition in Belgium. He plays for the first time in London, New York, and Jakarta. In 1992 he participates in the piano forum at the Darmstadt Summer Courses and gives several concerts there. In 1994 he performs in the United States (including at Carnegie Hall) and Russia, and he appears on various radio and television programmes.

1995

Wieringa accepts an invitation to the Iraqi arts festival in Babylon, despite the propagandistic nature of the event. He performs Postnuclear Winterscenario by Jacob ter Veldhuis. “That was my way of speaking up. I announced the piece in English and Arabic, and the message certainly came across. I also got to speak with some dissidents there. I support a political or economic boycott, but I am against an artistic one. Contact is so important for artists in isolation”. (de Volkskrant, December 20, 1996)

Jacob ter Veldhuis

1996

Wieringa puts the Carols on Piano programme together for the Christmas holiday. He plays newly composed piano music from North and South America, Russia, Poland, Iraq, Indonesia and the Netherlands: “In my many concert tours to a variety of countries, I've always made contact with local artists, who without exception have given me music. The Christmas theme seemed an excellent way to collect these experiences and contacts, because even in non-Western countries, the mass media turns Christmas into a phenomenon”. (NRC Handelsblad, December 16, 1996)

1996 - 2002

He works on a CD series of the complete sonatinas of Dutch composers since 1900. “The great thing about these sonatinas is that they are sketches; the composers take more risks”. (de Volkskrant, December 20, 1996)

2005 - 2006

With Finn Möricke, he presents classical tangos in “Tango à la Carte 2005”. The Argentine dance serves as inspiration for Wieringa's composition Zorro, in which he combines various styles of tango with contemporary compositional techniques. The piece is premiered on June 30, 2006. As a documentary maker and journalist, Wieringa explores various musical scenes in Teheran. He relates: “Music is dangerous. I gave concerts last week at the most important festival for music in Teheran, the International Fadjr Music Festival. In Iran, there are not many opportunities to listen to music in public. The festival directors have to navigate a path between the many rules. Only performances of religious music seem permissible. So on the day of my first concert I was summoned by the festival directors. We all had to audition before a moral/Islamic commission”. (NRC Handelsblad, January 27, 2006)

2007

Wieringa is a panel member of the weekly NPS programme Diskotabel on Radio 4, in which several experts discuss recent classical music CDs. In the summer, the first Mijzen Festival is held. Wieringa, who developed the concept of and organised the festival, tells of his motivation: “The West Frisians are hard workers, but they are not conscious enough of the beauty of their surroundings. I hope to change that, because I am convinced that you can make the world a better place by making your own environment better. I wanted to do something with music and theatre, using the Mijzen polder as the décor. That inspired me to organise the first Mijzen Festival”. (www.mijzen.nl) Wieringa also establishes the 2Kusten [2Coasts] production house and becomes its artistic director. The three major theatres in upper North Holland province are united in this venture to improve the theatrical infrastructure of the performing arts in North Holland.

2008

Wieringa's opera Drebbel is premiered on July 18. The main character, Cornelis Drebbel, (1572-1633) -- performed by the rock singer Thé Lau -- was a scholar and inventor from Alkmaar who practiced alchemy and spiritualism. Drebbel is part of the Karavaan touring summer festival. “Wieringa was inspired by early Baroque music, with polyphonic and at the same time emotional musical lines. Composers like Monteverdi and Handel can be heard amid contemporary intervals, chords and rhythms reminiscent of the minimal music of Philip Glass”. (NRC Handelsblad, July 19, 2008)

Thé Lau

2009

Wieringa is nominated for the Rabobank Culture Prize 2010. The jury calls him an “absolute multi-talent” whose initiatives stimulate the cultural life of North Holland. (Noordhollands Dagblad, December 18, 2009)

2010

On January 1, Wieringa is named director of the Provadje theatre and film house and director-administrator of the Yxie art and cultural centre, which will open in 2013. The centre is to be a place where people can become acquainted with the visual arts, film, theatre, music and poetry by means of a continuous festival characterized by multidiscipline programmes on varying themes. On March 11 the Noordhollands Dagblad reports that Wieringa's studio has been destroyed in a fire. His Steinway concert grand and most of the sheet music he collected on his tours are lost.

Photos Kees Wieringa

Audio/Video Kees Wieringa