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About

Tom Schipper (1994) was born in Nijmegen, but moved to Bennekom when he still was very young. After a few years, his first musical endeavours started, with recorder lessons in order to learn the very basics of music. At the age of 12, he started playing the drums, and his love for music never stopped. After 5 years, he has played drums, percussion (including melodic), guitar, french horn and, most notably, the piano. The most notable piano performance occured in April 2011, when he played principal piano in the musical "Mamma Mia". This musical was performed by studens of CSG Het Streek, a christian school in Ede where Tom finished his pre-university education in 2012 with an average marking of 8,4.​



At the age of 14, he started writing his own music. Over the years, he has developed his compositional and orchestration skills, and has taken composition classes and workshops with Hans Barkel, Fons Merkies, Tan Dun, Fabio Nieder and Calliope Tsoupaki. In 2012, he was accepted for the Bachelor composition course at the conservatory of Amsterdam, where he studies with Willem Jeths and Wim Henderickx.



He writes both classical and film music for a variety of ensembles, which are performed regularly in several concert halls and theaters, such as de Doelen (Rotterdam), Felix Meritis (Amsterdam), Conservatorium van Amsterdam, de Regentes (the Hague), muziekcentrum Enschede, Junushoff (Wageningen), stadsschouwburg Almere and, last but most certainly not least, in the concertgebouw Amsterdam.



Tom is active as an arranger as well. His latest arrangement was of arrangement of John Powell's film score of "How to train your Dragon" for Concert band, commissioned by Daniel Yiau, and performed on the 26th of September 2013 in the Bernard Haitinkzaal in the Conservatorium van Amsterdam



A major boost in his musical career has been the composition contest of the Dutch Wind Ensemble: "Op weg naar het nieuwjaarsconcert". He participated in this contest 4 times, in which he made it to the final 3 times and the 4th time he finally reached the new year's concert in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with his composition "Love's variety - On the diversities in a universal notion". This concert was broadcasted on dutch radio and television on the 1st of January 2013. 



2013 has been a very good year for Tom. In this year, he won the third prize in "Ricciotti's grote arrangeerwedstrijd", wrote his first score for a short film, which premiered in Pathe Tuschinsky in Amsterdam, won both the jury prize and the audience prize in the New Trombone Collective's "Slide factory composition contest" and wrote his first big piece for wind orchestra, "Perception", which premiered on the 3rd of November.



At the 1st of september 2012, Tom was one of the speakers at the TEDxEde event, where he talked about "CVA", his piece for flute solo, and how he used this piece to deal with a personal tragedy. Tom's talk was later on judged as one of the best of the event by a lot of visitors. At the 2013 edition of TEDxEde, he collaborated with dancer/choreographer Juul Henkens to create 3 short pieces based on the theme "Imagine".



Awards

2009 - Young talent award (3 workshops with Calliope Tsoupaki) - "I live"

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2012 - Young talent award (3 workshops with Calliope Tsoupaki and a commission for a chamber piece) - "Love's Variety - On the diversities in a universal notion"
 

2012 - Op weg naar het nieuwjaarsconcert (performance of his work with the Dutch Wind Ensemble in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam at the New year's concert 2013) - "Love's variety - On the diversities in a universal notion"

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2013 - "Ricciotti's grote arrangeerwedstrijd", third prize - "Mekhuteneste Mayne"



2013 - "Slide factory composition contest", organized by the New Trombone collective - Jury prize and audience prize. - "Dystopia".



 

 

 

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