Robert Zuidam

(Gouda, 1964)

Karoly Effenberger

Karoly Effenberger

Robert Zuidam is a true opera composer. Nobody else dares to be so idiosyncratically expressive and playful, has such a sense of drama and manages to move his audience with his musical theatre, like Zuidam does. In his operas, he fantasises, he discovers, he steals from and build on works that dare to be shamelessly expressive, multi-layered, lush in form and unconventionally orchestrated.

It is no surprise that Zuidam attracted attention in the American city of Boston. Indeed: he was the first composer since Britten to have been commissioned to write an opera for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for whom he wrote his second opera in 2003: Rage d’amours, which was also successfully performed during the Holland Festival in 2005 in a double-bill with his song cycle the McGonagall-Lieder.

Following various performances of his work at the Festival of Contemporary Music, he returned numerous times as a teacher to Tanglewood, including a period as artist-in-residence. In 2015, he wrote the Tanglewood Concerto for Emanuel Ax, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the institute. In 2010, Zuidam taught as Erasmus Professor at Harvard University and he was presented with the Kees van Baaren Prize in The Hague for his opera Rage d’amours. In 2012-13, he was composer-in-residence at the Utrecht Conservatory.

Zuidam is currently working, among other things, on Uwe Leipe Mastdramnis, a musical theatre work for the ensemble Nieuw Amsterdams Peil and mezzo-soprano Gerrie de Vries, as well as a cello concerto for the Cello Biennale Amsterdam 2016. In addition to his composing activities, Zuidam is also active as an essayist and librettist.

www.robertzuidam.com