Albert van Veenendaal (The Netherlands, 1956) refers to himself as ‘pictorial musician’ because of the epical and cinematic character of his music that cannot be easily pigeonholed. Improvisation and composition go hand in hand and merge seamlessly. With an open approach and interaction with his fellow musicians he creates musical structures that are unconventional and intuitive, displaying his unique style that will instantly be recognized. He studied piano at the Amsterdam Conservatory and has been working with many national and international jazz-, world- and classical musicians throughout Europe. He founded various groups and he played solo concerts with prepared piano. Albert Van Veenendaal is a passionate teacher of composition and making processes at the Utrecht conservatory. Sharing his experience and ‘passing on the torch’ is essential to his artistry.
Albert has toured with his groups, like Pavlov, piano trio Veenendaal/Kneer/Sun, RaRa Avis (songs, spoken word & improvisation). In 2001 he founded “Travelling Light”, a platform for pianists to play together. In this project he worked with with Cor Fuhler, Jozef Dumoulin, Niko Langenhuysen, Sylvie Courvoisier. In 2002 he won the Dutch Jazz Competition with his trio “On the Line” and he organized multiple editions of the multidisciplinary festival The Evening of the Longest/Shortest Night. Van Veenendaal takes part in an ongoing series of literary concerts around well known Dutch writers. He composed for and accompanied theatre- and dance companies.
With bass player Meinrad Kneer he founded Evil Rabbit Records, a label for contemporary improvised music. Most of his compositional work has been supported by the Performing Arts Fund – a trust for creative music. He composed for the internationally reknown Calefax reed quintet, The Amstel Saxophone Quartet, pianist Marcel Worms, percussionist Tatiana Koleva and harpist Miriam Overlach. He also wrote several pieces for ‘Bigtet’ Tetzepi, featuring Louis Sclavis and Nils Wogram. The music/sound design he created for the film ‘Film Earth’ was nominated for a “gouden kalf (golden calf)”, the most important Dutch Award for film. In his project ‘Minimal Damage’ Van Veenendaal engages in expanding the sound of a grand piano by preparing it accordingly. Collaborating with artists from different art disciplines like film, dance, pictorial art is one of his main interests in creating art. In 2023 he founded a new independant label, Minimal Damage Recordings, for adventurous music that doesn’t fit regular categories
