JacobTV - CV
Dutch avant pop composer JacobTV (aka Jacob Ter Veldhuis, 1951) started as a rock musician and studied composition and electronic music at the Groningen Conservatoire, where he was awarded the Dutch Composition Prize in 1980. During the eighties he made a name for himself with melodious compositions, straight from the heart and with great effect.
Jacob TV is preoccupied with American media and world events and draws raw material from those sources. His work possesses an explosive strength and raw energy combined with extraordinarily intricate architectural design. In his so called boombox works, he makes superb use of electronics, incorporating sound bytes from political speeches, commercials, interviews, talk shows, TVangelists, and what have you - 'urban songs' with a colorful mix of high and low culture.
Long queues at the box office for the four-day Jacob TV Festival in Rotterdam in 2001 already attested to the growing popularity of this composer, both in the Netherlands and abroad. His works were recently performed by such orchestras as The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Russian State Academy Orchestra and the Düsseldorf Symfoniker, by ensembles like the Nederlands Kamerkoor, Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Prism Quartet, New Century Quartet, Ruysdael Quartet, Electric Kompany and by soloists such as Branford Marsalis, James Galway, Arno Bornkamp, Claude Delangle, Margaret Lancaster, Andrew Russo, Kathy Supové, Kevin Gallagher and Evelyn Glennie. His boombox works, based on speech melody, became world famous. Several choreographers worked with his music, like Hans van Manen, Nanine Linning, Dominique Dumais, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and many others.
Early in his career, JacobTV strived to liberate new music from its isolation by employing a direct - at times provocative - idiom that spurns 'the dissonant', which in TV's view reflects a completely devalued means of musical expression. Standing up to what he called the 'washed-out avant garde', made him a controversial figure in certain circles. 'I pepper my music with sugar, ' he says. His 'coming-out' as a composer of ultra-tonal, mellifluous music reached its climax with the video oratorio Paradiso, premiered one day after 9-11 and released on DVD,CD and SACD by CHANDOS. At the Holland Festival 2005, the premiere of ...NOW... for stereophonic orchestra - with live triggered videos by Jaap Drupsteen -performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra received standing ovations.
With hundreds of performances and broadcasts worldwide each year, JacobTV is one of the most performed European composers. Several portrait concerts took place of his work, like in Brussels, Cologne, Amsterdam. May 2007 a three day JacobTV Festival took place at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. At the same time a box set trilogy was released containing 12 hours of audio and video on bastamusic.com.
new projects
Ricotti Ensemble- work for orchestra
Amsterdam Sinfonietta - work for string orchestra
Electric Kompany - work for rock band and soundtrack
Dominique Dumais and the Dutch National Ballet - soundtrack
Ronald Brautigam and the Dutch Radio Chamber Philharmonia - concerto for
piano and orchestra
TVBOX1, a music theatre show of boombox works & video
in close cooperation with Jan Boiten and Jan Willem Looze