Christiaan Willemse / Ink Still Wet 2024
«May we introduce you …?»Meet Christiaan Willemse, one of the five participants from this year's Ink Still Wet workshop, which will be lead by Composer in Residence Enno Poppe.
«As modern-day composers, we are often only part of the initial creation process of our works and apart from providing a few comments during rehearsals, we rarely get the opportunity to interpret our own music and to continue shaping and perfecting our ideas after this initial stage. Therefore, this workshop certainly offers a unique perspective that goes beyond composing, into the realm of bringing the composition to life, thereby continuing the compositional process beyond the writing desk.»
Biography
Christiaan Willemse was born in 1997 in Pretoria, South Africa. He began his musical training with the violin at the age of 13, shortly afterwards he developed an interest in composing. In August 2014, he was part of Alexander Müllenbach's composition class at the summer academy of the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. In 2012, he was awarded first prize in the youth category of the Stefans Grové National Composition Competition in South Africa. In 2015, he received a prize in the composition competition of the Golden Key Music Festival.
From 2016 to 2020, he studied composition in Kurt Estermann's class at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He completed his bachelor's degree with distinction in October 2020. Since then he has been part of the class of Johannes Maria Staud,* also at the Mozarteum, and remains part of this class as a postgraduate after completing his master's degree in October 2023. He had the possibility to complete an Erasmus exchange in Paris in 2022-2023 in the class of Frédéric Durieux for instrumental composition and Yan Maresz, Luis Naon and Grégoire Lorieux for electronics. He also received a scholarship from the Francis Burt Foundation Vienna for 2022-2023 and was involved as an arranger in the production Unterwegs at the Linz Landestheater in 2023.
In the past few years, he has taken part in several festivals and academies for New Music in Europe. These include the Crossroads Festival (Salzburg), ARCO (Salzburg/Marseille) and the Académie Ravel (Saint-Jean-de-Luz). During this time, he has had the opportunity to benefit from the expertise of renowned composers such as Yann Robin, Francesco Filidei, Eva Reiter, Henry Foures, Michael Jarrell and Ramon Lazkano. His music has already been performed by renowned ensembles, including oenm (Austria), Ensemble Zahir (Spain) and Les Métaboles (France).
In 2023, he received the first composition prize of the Académie Ravel. As part of the award, he received a commission for the 2024 Ravel Festival; this work will later be published by Edition Durand Salabert Eschig.
Christiaan Willemse's Selection
«My playlist consists of pieces by some composers from different eras that have played a special role in my development as a composer so far. In creating this playlist, I have tried to include pieces that I admire, even if they may not be as familiar to the general public as a Beethoven symphony, for example.»
Christiaan Willemse about his playlist