Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Faculty Member, School of Music

About

J. Simon van der Walt is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and teacher, of English and South African descent, now settled in Scotland. Originally a self-taught jazz trumpet player, he now teaches at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Stevenson College Edinburgh, specialising in composition, orchestration, and new technology. His qualifications include LLCM trumpet, FLCM composition, and TQFE (postrgad).

Simon has been writing and playing music for over twenty years; his extensive catalog of works demonstrates the breadth and depth of his musical interests, encompassing jazz, Indonsian gamelan, electronics and contemporary devised theatre. He is currently engaged in PhD research at the RSAMD under Gordon McPherson, comprising a series of works which transgress the boundaries of the traditional concert;

‘If one starts by considering an ensemble as a collection of performers rather than a collection of instruments, and the performance area as an undiscovered space, what musical consequences follow?’
(from program note to ‘othing’, for strings)

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