I am Niels van der Leest, born and raised in Enschede (the Netherlands) on October 22 1976. As a child I couldn't be stopped hitting everything that made a sound. I come from a musical family; my father (died august 2000) was an opera singer and my mother was a dancer at the opera. Therefore the choice of becoming a professional percussionist wasn't a big suprise. During and after highschool I studied at the conservatorium in Enschede. After 4 years I moved to Amsterdam to get my Bachelor and Master degree at the Sweelinck conservatorium. During my studie I got in touch with a large amount of different kinds of playing percussion. I have played in the big ochestra's of Holland like: Het Koninklijk concertgebouw orkest, het Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest, De Nederlandse Opera, Het Metropool Orkest, Orkest van het Oosten en het Radio Philharmonisch Orkest. Besides that I now work at two percussion groups AbSurdo , a Brasilian percussion group, and Circle Percussion , THE Dutch Taiko group, as a player.
As a composer I'm working very hard to update my portfolio as often as possible, due to the fact that I want to become a composer in the Gaming Industry. I'm nuts about games, So you could say that I'm trying to get my 2 biggest hobby's work together in one dream job :) In 2007 I won the publics prize in the Interface Soundgame Contest with 46,4 % of the votes, became a member of Bgin and went to pro on pro-demo.
Besides creating lots of original work I also arrange game soundtracks ,under the name DarkMessenger, some of the arrangements are played by my percussion students in Houten (The Netherlands).
Have a good time listening to my work.
For more music and news check out my website www.nielsvanderleest.nl
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