Travellers – poems by Edward Thomas (‘Lights out’) and Robert Frost (‘The road not taken’) (2023)
instrumentation: baritone and string quartet
Edward Thomas’ ‘Lights out” describes the moment one falls asleep. Thomas was always very insecure about his decisions. He often wished he had taken the other option. Therefore Frost wrote ‘The road not taken’ for him.
 – duration: ca. 9′
 – published by Donemus preview

Tijd (2023)
Dutch text: M. Vasalis (permission granted by publisher van Oorschot)
instrumentation: (mezzo) soprano and violin with tape producing a sustained tone
 – duration: ca. 6’30”
 – not published yet

Lyrics of Life (2020)
instrumentation: soprano (or tenor) and guitar
Written for and dedicated to Channa Malkin (soprano) and Izhar Elias (guitar)
The texts look at life from various sides, such as: joy, love, quest for paradise and memories.
The poems are:
– The white peace (William Sharp)
– The life that I have – (Leo Marks)
– Eldorado – (Edgar Allen Poe)
– Come slowly – Eden! (Emily Dickinson)
– Music, when soft voices die (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
– Leisure (William Henry Davies)
– Joy (Sara Teasdale)

Lyrics of Life are the outcome of two musical worlds: my background in popular music and the classical. Having grown up in the 1960s and 1970s my musical expression was mainly formed by pop music with a special focus on singer-song writers such as Paul Simon and Don McClean. However, as of 1980 or so, my interest switched to classical music. Yet somehow, I knew that someday I would write a piece for voice and guitar where both genres could meet. It is in these songs that I strongly feel I have achieved this. Although classical in form and idiom, they touch the directness of popular song.
My next pieces might very well be in a different style, as I do not like to repeat myself (too much).
 – premiere: four of the seven songs October 3, 2021 Paleis van Justitie Leeuwarden
 – duration: ca. 13′
 – published by Donemus preview

Ritual text for the afterlife (2019)
Instrumentation: female voice and vibraphone
Fascinating texts written on small gold tablets that were deposited in graves provide a unique source of information about what some Greeks and Romans believed regarding the fate that awaited them after death, and how they could influence it. Texts, dating from the late fifth century BCE to the second century CE.
The tablets belonged to those who had been initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus Bacchius and relied heavily upon myths narrated in poems ascribed to the mythical singer Orpheus.
The text I have used is from the cist- grave of a woman, around 400 BCE; now in the Museo Archeologico Statale di Vibo. The rectangular gold tablet, folded several times, was found lying on the upper chest of the skeleton and was perhaps attached to its neck by a tiny string.
Source: RITUAL TEXTS FOR THE AFTERLIFE Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston (2007)
 – duration: ca. 4′
 – not published yet

Psalm voor Marijke Mooij (2017)
Instrumentation: soprano and organ
commissioned by Theatre company ‘Ûnder de toer’ as part of the theatre show ‘Marijke Mooij’
text: Bouke Oldenhof (Frisian text)
 – premiere: November 2017 Grote Kerk, Leeuwarden
 – duration: ca. 2′
 – not published

Map into heraldry (2012)
text: Tony Conran
instrumentation: baritone, piano and bass drum
 – duration: ca. 1′ 10″
 – not published

Between, and I – fragments of Sappho (2007)
insrtrumentation: soprano and two harps
commissioned by Duo Billits with financial support from the ‘Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst’
The text consists of 4 poems.
Sappho means mistery. Her life is a mystery and so is her poetry, which is even incomplete. Her poetry comes to us on papyrus only, in which there are many holes. So we only have fragments. But it’s exactly these holes that impresses our imagination. And it’s these holes that makes it exciting to read and at the same time, it offers space for a personal interpretation.
 – premiere: January 12, 2007, Arnhem by Duo Billitis, Ekaterina Levental (who also sang) and Eva Tebbe
 – duration: ca. 7′ 30″
 – published by Donemus preview

Elegy for the Welsh dead in the Falklands 1982 (2005)
Instrumentation: tenor and cello
text: Tony Conran
 – duration: ca. 9′
 – not published

A thin place – Rann Romh Urnuigh (2001)
instrumentation: violoncello and the player’s voice
text: from the Carmina Gadelica
 – duration: ca. 5′ 30″
 – published by Donemus preview

Youth and Age (1998)
insrtrumentation: baritone and piano
commissioned by Maarten Koningsberger with financial support of the ‘Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst’
dedicated to Maarten Koningsberger
William Butler Yeats’ poetry is based on Irish nationalism, Celtic myth, politics, love, mystic and ageing. It’s the ageing aspect which runs through this cycle of 10 songs
 – premiere: January 26, 2000 Orpheus, Apeldoorn by Maarten Koningsberger and Kelvin Grout
 – duration: ca. 21′
 – published by Donemus preview

A Trampwoman’s tragedy (after a Honeymoon time at an inn) (1995 -revision 1997)
instrumentation: soprano, clarinet and piano
written for the Midas Ensemble – Clara de Vries, soprano, Gerard Zuyderhoff clarinet, Steven Faber piano
 – premiere: …..
 – text: Thomas Hardy
 – duration: ca. 20′
 – published by Donemus preview