Jeroen van Veen

Jeroen van Veen, born May 2, 1969, in Herwen en Aerdt in the Netherlands, ranks among the foremost Dutch practitioners of minimalism, working both at the keyboard and on the page. Fanfare has identified him as the leading exponent of minimalism in Holland today. He started piano studies at seven and trained at the Utrecht Conservatory with Alwin Bär and Håkon Austbø before passing his examinations in 1993. Subsequent master classes with Roberto Szidon, Claude Helffer, and Hans-Peter and Volker Stenzl prepared him for duo work alongside his brother Maarten and Sandra Mol. Performing as Duo van Veen, the pair gained particular traction in the United States after capturing the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami. Appearances at the Reder Piano Festival in 1988, the Festival der Kunsten in Bad Gleichenberg in 1992, Wien Modern in 1993, and the Holland Dance Festival in 1998 strengthened his profile, and he has remained a regular participant in the Lek Art Festival. Recitals have taken him to Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia, and the United States, while orchestral engagements have included performances under Peter Eötvös and Robert Craft. In 1995 he co-founded the biannual International Student Piano Competition and has continued as its artistic director. His recording activity began with Duo van Veen in 1992; many of his projects appeared on Dutch labels, notably the budget imprint Brilliant, which issued his nine-volume Minimal Piano Collection in 2006. Further releases have featured major minimalist figures such as the crossover composer Ludovico Einaudi and, in 2018, John Adams, together with a 2014 survey of his own pieces. Those compositions inhabit a loose minimalist idiom while drawing on jazz, trance music, pop, blues, and additional sources. In 2019 Van Veen paid tribute to Japanese film composer Ryiuchi Sakamoto with the solo-piano set Sakamoto: For Mr. Lawrence Piano Music.