Maarten Bauer (2000) is a young Dutch composer and musician who studied composition with Martijn Padding, Calliope Tsoupaki, Jan van de Putte, Yannis Kyriakides, and Adeline Wong at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague and the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Singapore. He also pursued minors in Classical Saxophone, Classical Voice, and Education.
During his studies, Maarten began to explore his Indo-European roots by studying Indonesian music and Indonesian colonial history in relation to his own music and his family's past.
For six months, Maarten studied composition at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Singapore with Adeline Wong and gamelan with Rosemainy Buang. After finishing his exchange, he continued to deepen his knowledge of gamelan by living for two months in Bali with a local family and studying gamelan with Made Agus Wardana and I Nyoman Sedana.
Maarten's oeuvre is strongly influenced by non-Western music, particularly from the Middle East and Southeast Asia. His works are often linked to poetry, literature, philosophy, and socio-political topics, especially (post)colonialism, orientalism, and cultural appropriation.
