Wim Daeleman

Biography

As a 16-year-old, Wim Daeleman (°1947) started taking oboe lessons at the Municipal Music Academy of Turnhout with Michaël Scheck, who also taught him the principles of solfège. It was also around this time that he wrote his first compositions, including a Duo for two oboes.

In 1978, he came into contact with the Studio voor Experimentele Muziek, Antwerp (SEM, led by Joris De Laet). Several electronic compositions emerged from this contact, including Semmelet (1979) and Integrated Parametric (1980). The latter work was performed several times in Belgium and also during a concert tour by some members of the SEM ensemble (Joris De Laet, Leo Verheyen and Wim Daeleman) in the then Yugoslavia (Zagreb) and in Canada (Montreal, Kingston and Toronto). Later, the concert was broadcast on Radio3.

In Antwerp, he founded the NMC (New Music Concerts) around 1980 together with Joris De Laet and Karel Goeyvaerts, with the aim of giving a very contemporary repertoire a chance. He left the SEM ensemble at the end of 1981, but continued to compose electronic works at home in his private studio.

Because of professional (Poison Control Centre, Brussels) and family commitments, as well as a critical view of his own work, he stopped composing in the second half of the 1980s.

From 2011, he has been studying cello with Jan Sciffer at Mol Music Academy. And since quitting his professional duties, Wim Daeleman has started composing again and more and more, both acoustically and electronically. He was currently taking the “Techniques d’Ecriture sur Support” course with Annette Vande Gorne. In the Music Academy of Mol, he also took the courses Experimental Music (Dagmar Feijen) and Music Production (Tom Van Achte).

With regard to his recent electronic work: starting from a limited number of sounds (recorded with a microphone), Wim Daeleman tries to create a composition by combining arrangements of these sounds (lengthening, shortening, raising, lowering, reverb or not, …). He finds it important not just to create sound panoramas but to arrive at a certain progression in the structure of his compositions.

(source: a.o. Flavie Roquet ‘Lexicon Flemish composers born after 1800’ (2007))

Compositions performed at a concert FeBEM (since early 2019):