Edition: V
Bio/Studies
Daan Janssens was born in Bruges in 1983, and had violin, piano, music theory, composition and many more courses at the Bruges music academy.
From 2002 till 2007, he studied composition at the Ghent Conservatory with Frank Nuyts, and attended, among others, lessons of Godfried-Willem Raes (improvisation) and Filip Rathé (analyses and beyond). He visited different international composition courses and had master classes with Peter Eötvös, Luca Francesconi, Magnus Lindberg, Bruno Mantovani…. Besides composition seminars, he attended conducting lessons/seminars with Ensemble Modern, Johannes Kalitzke, Marco Angius and Lucas Vis.
In 2006, his composition for string quartet …Passages… received the first prize during the Ghent Week of Contempory Music. Several of his works were selected by ISCM Flanders (in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012).
Career
He had the opportunity to collaborate with both Belgian and international ensembles and soloist, such as the Spectra Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Aton & Armide, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, Vocaallab, Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, soloist Jean-Guihen Queyras… during festivals as the TRANSIT festival, Ars Musica, De Singel, ISCM world music days 2009 (Sweden), Concertgebouw Brugge, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Festival Musica Strasbourg 2010, Operadagen Rotterdam…
Since 2008, he collaborates intensively with LOD, a Ghent based music theatre production house, which resulted in march 2012 in Les Aveugles, a chamber opera after Maurice Maeterlinck. This production was made in collaboration with the Liége/Paris based visual artist Patrick Corrilon.
Since 2006, he conducts and performs with the Nadar Ensemble, an ensemble dedicated to new music. Nadar performed at various Belgian and international locations, highlights were our concerts during Ars Musica 2008 & 2009, the Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2010 & 2012, Festival Musica Strasbourg 2010 and Donaueschinger Musiktage 2012.
Since 2007, Daan Janssens is working as a research assistant at the University College Ghent.
Notes on the Musma Composition
“Canto”
Canto is a miniature for wind quintet and was written in January 2014. When I wrote this piece, I had a gradual transformation in mind. The starting point was a very slow, ascending melody of the clarinet and the horn. Only after a while, the other instruments join and step by step, the melody becomes more harmonic. In that sense, Canto was a study in polyphony, or better, how to avoid it. As only near the end of the piece, the five wind instruments are treated as individuals.
