December 2004
Matthijs Vermeulen Price for One
Barbara Hannigan in One
Michel van der Aa has received the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize 2004 for his chamber opera One. The prestigious Dutch composition prize, which amounts to EUR 7,500, is awarded every year for a significant new musical work.
One, composed in 2002 for soprano, video and sound track, was premiered on 12 January 2003 by Barbara Hannigan in the Amsterdam Frascati Theatre and has since been performed in various cities across the Netherlands and at festivals in Zagreb, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Cracow, Oslo and Budapest. As in van der Aa’s other works, the subject matter is the confrontation with, and alienation of, one’s own existence. Projected images and electronic sounds add emphasis to the stage performance of the protagonist, while recorded tracks and live elements play against each other in virtuoso fashion.
The Matthijs Vermeulen Prize was given to Michel van der Aa on 10 December 2004 in the Utrecht music centre ‘Vredenburg’. To mark the occasion, the violinist Maaike Aarts performed his composition Memo (2003) for violin and portable cassette player.
Film opera. Libretto David Mitchell