Michel van der Aa height - How tall is Michel van der Aa?

Forthcoming projects include a clarinet concerto for the London Sinfonietta to be premiered in April 2014 and new pieces for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra as part of his long-term partnership with that group, which will include a large orchestral work, a solo concerto, and an evening-length Passion setting for soloists, choir and orchestra, expected to première in 2017.

Van der Aa has recently completed a new 3D film-opera entitled Sunken Garden, in collaboration with David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, Sunken Garden is a joint commission from English National Opera, Barbican Centre, Toronto Luminato Festival, Opera National de Lyon, and the Holland Festival, and was given its première by English National Opera under André de Ridder at the Barbican Centre, London, on 12 April 2013, with Roderick Williams in the role of Toby.

In November 2012 it was announced that van der Aa would be the recipient of the 2013 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition, for his cello concerto Up-Close, a 'highly innovative fusion of musical and visual art' written for Sol Gabetta and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. In 2013 he won the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize.

He directed the television production of One for the Dutch national broadcasting company NPS. Passage (2004), a short film by van der Aa, has been shown at several international festivals and has been aired on Dutch national television.

He completed a short program in film directing at the New York Film Academy in 2002. He also participated in the Lincoln Center Theater Director's Lab, a short, intensive course in stage direction in 2007.

Michel van der Aa's music theatre works, including the chamber opera One (2002), the opera After Life (2006, Amsterdam) and the music theatre work The Book of Disquiet, have received international critical praise. The innovative aspect of these operas is their use of film images and sampled soundtracks as an essential element of the score. Staging, film and music are interwoven into a collage of transparent layers, resulting in a work that is part documentary film and part philosophy.

Van der Aa was recipient of the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1999. He also received the prestigious Matthijs Vermeulen Award for One in 2004. He received the Siemens Composers' Prize in 2005. He also received the Charlotte Köhler Prize for his directing work and the interdisciplinary character of his oeuvre in the same year. He was awarded the Hindemith Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in 2006.

Michel van der Aa (Dutch pronunciation: [ˌmixəl vɑn dər ˈaː] ; born 10 March 1970) is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music.

Michel van der Aa was born 10 March 1970 in Oss. He trained as a recording engineer at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and studied composition with Diderik Wagenaar, Gilius van Bergeijk and Louis Andriessen.