Rogier van Gaal
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Biography
Rogier was born on 2nd November 1973 in The Netherlands as Rogier A. van Gaal. His first interest was listening to records of his father, who had a big variety of albums from artists such as Elton John, The Beegees, Beethoven and Mozart. At the age of 14, a friend of the family introduced him to the wonderful world of electronic music, lending him an album of Vangelis called "Antarctica". Amazed by the beauty and authenticity of this masterpiece, Rogier started collecting music from artists like Vangelis, Nova, Gandalf, Kitaro, Jarre, Jan Hammer,. Tangerine Dream and Yanni. Days and nights were spent on listening to their inspiring, original, mysterious, sparkling, hope giving compositions.
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At the age of 16 Rogier knew for sure he wanted to make this kind of music as well and he bought his first instrument, a Roland D-10. On this synthesizer he learned how to program new sounds and how to play melodies from artists such as Gandalf.
More equipment followed and in 2001, after many years of practice and several jobs as music arranger, he decided to give it a shot: he published his own compositions on the internet using music site MP3.com. To his great surprise, his songs were picked up by the audience immediately and within months all of his songs reached top 10 positions in the International and European easy listening download charts. MP3.com decided to give him the "Hot artist spotlight"-status and a few months later he even received the "INCA music award" for best new age musician.
While his music was developing more and more towards the orchestral film music genre, he sent a demo tape to Quantum Records and, again to his great surprise, this resulted in the release of "From the shadow to the sun", containing some recent work and a collection of his earlier work that had done particularly well on the internet.
The album became a huge succes. Many copies were sold and Rogier's music was played at new age radio stations all over the world, including the USA. Young American film director Vincent Lin approached Rogier to compose music for his drama movie "364 Cranes", which will be submitted to film festivals around the world. Independant Windows desktop theme designer The Penniless Prophet, uses Rogier's music for his famous artistic sreensavers. Wind and Wire's Dene Bebbington chose "From the shadow to the sun" as the "best recording of 2004". Rogier's music got available through All Music, a Dutch leading company offering library music online, most of Rogier's music is now accessible through this site as well and available for use in multimedia / video / documentary productions.
In 2006 Rogier's brand new CD "Spiritual Diversity" got released on the "Strange Charm" record label. Although his second album brought him even further than the first one, musically and commercially, Rogier decided it was time to move on, he wanted to reach a larger audience. He got in touch with the producers of Digidance, who immediately approved a new song he had created for the Dance and Trance industry. This record will be released this year on one of the biggest dance record labels in Europe and again, expectations are very high.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=529794
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Top Songs
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