In May 2019, nearing the end of his gap year, Teun started work one of his biggest musical projects so far: a composition for orchestra. The wind orchestra he already played in was very welcoming to receive a composition from him, so he spent the next three to four months composing and arranging. In February 2020, during the ensemble's largest yearly performance, it was finally time to present Bellerophon to the world. The event reached multiple newspapers, including AD, De Gelderlander and Klankwijzer. The piece was published for other orchestras to play by AM Music.
Bellerophon is a cinematic, semi-programmatic piece, but with clear traces of Teun's usual inspirations from the pop and jazz world. It follows the tragic story of the Greek hero who, in exile for accidentally killing his own brother, killed the monstrous Chimaera while flying on the back of the winged horse Pegasus.
Teun Buwalda (Utrecht, 2000) has been doing music for as long as he can remember. He shapes his ideas using piano, trombone and his own voice, but his favourite thing to do is writing arrangements and compositions. A sucker for music theory, Teun describes his own work as a middle ground between easy listening and complex jazz. Experimental musical concepts can be fun to explore, but everyone should be able to enjoy the sound.
Teun grew up in Culemborg and started on West African djembe as well as piano. Before middle school, he sung in multiple youth choirs and performed with bands. At O.R.S. Lek en Linge, he assembled a network of anyone he could find who could play an instrument, and often started small projects. Meanwhile he conducted musicals, arranged for his a capella group and dozens of bands, and participated in the composing contest set out each year by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble. During his final year at high school, he followed a preparatory year for Composition at the Amsterdam Conservatory.
Nowadays, Teun is an Artificial Intelligence Student at Utrecht University. However, music never left his side: Teun continues to start musical projects, travel around with world-renowned choir Dekoor Close Harmony and explores the borders between AI and music. In 2022, he followed the Music & Technology in Practice minor at HKU and in 2023, he wrote his bachelor’s thesis about tuning systems.
Teun can always be reached via e-mail: teuncb@gmail.com