BIOGRAPHY

The Dutch tenor Marcel Beekman [born 1969] began his career at a young age as a boy soprano. In the early 1980s he recorded several albums and became nationally known after regular appearances on both radio and television.

After concluding his vocal studies at conservatory with distinction in 1993, he was coached by the renowned voice teacher Margreet Honig in Amsterdam.

Marcel is a sought-after soloist in both the Baroque/Classical and the contemporary concert and opera repertoire. He has performed with such orchestras as the Berlin Symphoniker, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Münchner Philharmoniker, Musica Antiqua Köln, les Arts Florissants, Schönberg Ensemble, Sinfonietta Amsterdam, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Netherlands Bach Society, Combattimento Consort, Gulbenkian Lisbon, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto and with all the major Dutch orchestras, including the Netherlands Philharmonic, Radio Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Residence Orchestra.

Among the many conductors for whom he has sung are William Christie, Frans Brüggen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Yakov Kreizberg, Gennady Rhozdestvensky, Claus Peter Flor, Ed Spanjaard, Jan Willem de Vriend, Kenneth Montgomery, Jos van Veldhoven, Jaap van Zweden, Reinhard Goebel, Lev Markiz, Jurjen Hempel, David Porcelijn and Micha Hamel. Marcel appears regularly at leading concert venues both national and international [Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Milan, New York and Tokyo] and also at festivals in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Lithuania and Iran.

His broad concert repertoire includes the vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries [he received a Golden Award for his recording on the Deutsche Grammophon-label of the evangelist part in the Dutch translation of the St. Matthew Passion], solo motets for high tenor by François Couperin, oratorios by Händel, Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Orff, Honneger and Stravinsky, but also less well-known works such as “Le Vin Herbé” by Frank Martin, “Dies Natalis” by Gerald Finzi, “Serenade” and “Nocturne” by Benjamin Britten or “Job” by Peter Maxwell Davies, and extends to the more avant-garde work of composers such as Peter Schat, Claude Vivier or John Cage. Alongside these activities, Marcel, accompanied at the piano by Ernst Munneke and Hans Adolfsen, can be heard in the entire range of traditional song repertoire [also on the DG-label, he released a Dutch translation of Schubert’s song-cycle “Die schöne Müllerin”], but focuses especially on contemporary song. In so doing he has sung the premières of many pieces [some of them written especially for him] by composers such as Elmer Schönberger, Roderik de Man, Martijn Padding, Jacques Bank, António Chagas Rosa, Myriam Marbe and Jeff Hamburg.

On the opera stage Marcel has appeared to date in “Orfeo” by Claudio Monteverdi [Pastore], “L’Ipermestra” by Francesco Cavalli [Berenice], “Les Indes Galantes” by Jean Philippe Rameau [Valère and Damon], “Arminio” by Heinrich Ignaz von Biber [Germanico], “Alceste” by Chistoph Willibald von Gluck [High Priest of Apollo and Apollo], “Down in the valley” by Kurt Weill [Brack Weaver], “A season in hell”, a quadripartite music theatre piece by Roderik de Man, Theo Abazis, Barbara Woof and Paul Bruinen [Arthur Rimbaud], “Memory of Lake Taiping” by Xu Shuya [Wu Zhengwen] and “Jona” by Willem Breuker [in the title role]. A film version of “Jona” is available on DVD.

Marcel Beekman is represented by SOREK ARTISTS MANAGEMENT