ANNE-MAARTJE LEMEREIS - NETHERLANDS
BORN 12 APRIL
Anne-Maartje Lemereis is a composer and pianist. For her, composing and performing are inextricably linked. She started her studies at the Utrecht Conservatory as a pianist, but decided to specialize in composing. She obtained both a Bachelor's and Master's degree in this. During her Master of Music, she again focused intensively on her piano studies, and so her two passions melted together.
After a number of preparatory years in the talent class of Schools in Art, Anne-Maartje studied piano for a year at the Utrecht Conservatory. However, her heart was in composing and she decided to focus entirely on that. She studied composition with Jeroen D’hoe and Caroline Ansink. In 2013 she finished her Bachelor with the premiere of her first piano concerto. After this she decided to follow a Master of Composition in combination with piano lessons with Henry Kelder at the Utrecht Conservatory: this is how her passion for composing and performing a contemporary piano repertoire came together. She concluded her Master of Music by composing, producing and co-performing her opera ‘Graaf!’.
Anne-Maartje composes for various musicians and ensembles on assignment. For example, she wrote the mini-opera "Ping" for Ensemble Vonk, "A Requiem in Quotes" for Olga Vocal Ensemble, "Aleksandra" for Podium Witteman and a series of short stop-motion films with music for the Dutch Silent Film Festival.
In addition to her work as a composer and performing pianist, Anne-Maartje has her own teaching practice in Amersfoort and Utrecht. She teaches both piano and composition. In piano lessons, apart from the regular repertoire, much attention is given to improvisation and composition. Since 2017, Anne-Maartje has been organizing workshops and concerts for children and young people who like to compose under the name In de Knop.
After a number of preparatory years in the talent class of Schools in Art, Anne-Maartje studied piano for a year at the Utrecht Conservatory. However, her heart was in composing and she decided to focus entirely on that. She studied composition with Jeroen D’hoe and Caroline Ansink. In 2013 she finished her Bachelor with the premiere of her first piano concerto. After this she decided to follow a Master of Composition in combination with piano lessons with Henry Kelder at the Utrecht Conservatory: this is how her passion for composing and performing a contemporary piano repertoire came together. She concluded her Master of Music by composing, producing and co-performing her opera ‘Graaf!’.
Anne-Maartje composes for various musicians and ensembles on assignment. For example, she wrote the mini-opera "Ping" for Ensemble Vonk, "A Requiem in Quotes" for Olga Vocal Ensemble, "Aleksandra" for Podium Witteman and a series of short stop-motion films with music for the Dutch Silent Film Festival.
In addition to her work as a composer and performing pianist, Anne-Maartje has her own teaching practice in Amersfoort and Utrecht. She teaches both piano and composition. In piano lessons, apart from the regular repertoire, much attention is given to improvisation and composition. Since 2017, Anne-Maartje has been organizing workshops and concerts for children and young people who like to compose under the name In de Knop.
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IMOGEN HOLST - UK
BORN 12 APRIL
Imogen Clare Holst CBE was a British composer, arranger, conductor, teacher, musicologist, and festival administrator. The only child of the composer Gustav Holst, she is particularly known for her educational work at Dartington Hall in the 1940s, and for her 20 years as joint artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. In addition to composing music, she wrote composer biographies, much educational material, and several books on the life and works of her father.
From a young age, Holst showed precocious talent in composing and performance. After attending Eothen School and St Paul's Girls' School, she entered the Royal College of Music, where she developed her skills as a conductor and won several prizes for composing. Unable for health reasons to follow her initial ambitions to be a pianist or a dancer, Holst spent most of the 1930s teaching, and as a full-time organiser for the English Folk Dance and Song Society. These duties reduced her compositional activities, although she made many arrangements of folksongs. After serving as an organiser for the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts at the start of the Second World War, in 1942 she began working at Dartington. In her nine years there she established Dartington as a major centre of music education and activity.
In the early 1950s Holst became Benjamin Britten's musical assistant, moved to Aldeburgh, and began helping with the organisation of the annual Aldeburgh Festival. In 1956 she became joint artistic director of the festival, and during the following 20 years helped it to a position of pre-eminence in British musical life. In 1964 she gave up her work as Britten's assistant, to resume her own compositional career and to concentrate on the preservation of her father's musical legacy. Her own music is not widely known and has received little critical attention; much of it is unpublished and unperformed. The first recordings dedicated to her works, issued in 2009 and 2012, were warmly received by critics. She was appointed CBE in 1975 and received numerous academic honours.
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Phantasie Quartet by Imogen Holst
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