Donemus Webwinkel — Clements, Dominy

Dominy Clements studied composition with Christopher Brown and Edward Gregson and flute with Gareth Morris at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He continued his studies in composition with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, also studying with Gilius van Bergeijk and Frederic Rzewski. His work has won awards including the Piano Circus Composers Competition 1994, the Icebreaker Composers’ Competition (London) 1996, his piano concerto Concerto in Esse reached the final shortlist of the Edvard Grieg Memorial Competition 1997–98, and his electronic soundscape 2013 Free Spaces was finalist in the 2013 ‘Music for Car Parks’ prize, Belgium. He has also written film scores including Shereen Abdul Baki’s Nourish (2008), and for Cheryl White’s award-winning production company Lost for Words: In Which a Lady Suffers a Loss (2010), Before Babel (2012, winner of Best Film and Most Innovative film at the Worthing WOW festival 2014), and the widely screened A Lighthouse in Breaking Waves (2016). He has also produced music scores for Lisa Clifford’s documentaries Kill All the Lawyers (2014) and Warlord (2018).
Dominy Clements plays subcontrabass flute in ensemble BlowUp! and ‘De Vrienden van Matilda’, a quartet that performs his music for the children’s theatre production Matilda en Kleine Vis, also recorded on a CD included with the illustrated storybook by Noor Kamerbeek. This team, that also includes artists Gerard de Bruyne and José Vingerling, also developed the children’s theatre production Drakensporen in 2017. Clements was for many years a member of The Netherlands Flute Orchestra, with which his work The Blue and the Dim and the Dark was performed alongside the Nargen Festival Choir during the Nargen Festival in Tallinn, Estonia in 2011. As a result of this his opera An Enlightened Disciple of Darkness on the life of Estonian-born inventor Bernhard Schmidt (1897-1935) was commissioned for and performed to great acclaim at the Nargen Festival in Tallinn in 2013. This was conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste, stage design and production was by Giuseppe Frigeni, and was performed by BlowUp! and singers including soloists Endrik Üksvärav (Schmidt) and Maria Valdmaa (Mother/Minna Bretschneider). This production has been broadcast on Estonian Klassikaraadio. His second opera Der nordische Baer on the life and work of Estonian naturalist and explorer Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) received its premiere in Tartu in March 2017, also conducted by Tõnu Kaljuste and with Benjamin Kirk performing the title role.
Past awards for his work have included First Prize in the Arts for the Earth Festival/Rainforest competition (1990, for Murder of Crows I), First Prize in the 1992 Piano Circus competition (Two Lagrangian Functions) and First Prize in the Icebreaker competition (1996, for A Little Dutch Snuff). In addition, he was a finalist in the Edvard Grieg memorial competition in Oslo (1997–98, for Concerto in Esse).
Dominy Clements further works as manager of the Podiumbureau and Career Development Office of the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague; as a freelance translator, writer and performing musician, also writing as a CD critic for MusicWeb International. He has worked for many years as a staff writer for the Naxos record label, as well as being the author of numerous published short stories.