welcome !
I will soon embark on the Ocean Viking, a ship operated by the humanitarian organization SOS MEDITERRANEE for search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea, to collect a wide spectrum of sonic materials, from communications during rescues, eco-acoustics of the sea and the vessel’s mechanical acoustic textures to life-on-board scenes, multilingual personal testimonies and life stories, as well as dialogues with mediators, healthcare professionals, and crew members. These recordings will form the raw material for an original electroacoustic composition, merging documentary fieldwork with a more abstract and musical approach. The final piece will be constructed through a layered, polyphonic editing process, seeking to evoke a deeply human, sensorial, and spiritual experience.It will be presented as a sound-art installation / if you want to support this project, you can join my Ulule crowdfunding https://fr.ulule.com/bovanderwerf/
– finishing polishing EARTH TALK, a new project in collaboration with Stéphane Payen, Lynn Cassiers, Benoit Delbecq, Tamara Walcott and Sarah Murcia, and scientists Nicolas Farrugia, Léa Mariton and Samuel Loviton/ creation at JAZZDOR , Strasbourg, 17 november 2025 and la Dynamo de Pantin on 18 november https://jazzdor.com/fr/pentadox-earth-talk
happy to share ‘WALDEN’, recorded in may 2024 with the beautifuls jean-paul estiévenart on trumpet, joao barradas on accordion, jozef dumoulin on piano and keys, nathan wouters on double bass and antoine pierre on drums
https://bovanderwerf.bandcamp.com/album/walden
https://open.qobuz.com/album/v5x2tz7p8nttb
– my phd thesis ‘ les petits pays colorés ‘ is available on this website, all pages are online : scroll right and down from the ‘research’ tab, if you want to go straight to the heart of the thesis, go to the ‘compositions’ page / happy to share after a 5-years doctorate research at the university of LEUVEN / it’s basically a casebook introducing a set of functional melodic and harmonic systems directly inspired by the languages of MESSIAEN, aiming to provide practical tools for exploring the colors of MESSIAEN in jazz improvisation and composition. These micro-systems are developed in both ‘closed circuit’ (modes of limited transpositions in camera) and ‘open circuit’ (modes of limited transpositions permeable to tonal organisations and related structures such as tonal signatures, total chromaticism, etc.). All in french though…slowly working on the english version…
– very happy to be 1/4 of STAIRS AND SHELLS, a new collective group with Elias Stemeseder, Felix Henkelhausen and Samuel Ber, soon on tour ( may 2026 ) )https://www.insidejazz.be/portfolio_page/eggs-stairs-shells
– very happy to start a new joint project with Magic Malik, DRAGONS, featuring Adèle Viret on cello, Lynn Cassiers on voice, Zé Almeida on bass and Samuel Ber on drums/ some music soon 🙂
– very happy to play with FALL UP, Antoine Pierre’s new band ( featuring Jesse Van Ruller on guitar and Ketija Ringa Karahona on flute), and Stéphane Galland’s RHYTHMHUNTERS XTND ( featuring Wajdi Riahi, Louise Van den Heuven, PA Savoyat, Robin Eubanks, Shoko Igarashi, Lucia Pires, Sylvain Debaisieux, Victor Kaddaj),
– link to my basic soundcloud page :https://soundcloud.com/bo-van-der-werf-209926043
– listen to this recent CD : VERESS VARIATIONS on PEEWEE label: https://open.spotify.com/intl-fr/album/1rXjvfZhhFsO0GWsqU8Qrk?si=mKopv0lYQx-B-s9v3wLZYQ
some nice reviews
https://jazzmania.be/octurn-veress-variations/
https://www.citizenjazz.com/Octurn-3483427.html
https://www.citizenjazz.com/Octurn-et-Veress-d-un-monde-a-l-autre.html
https://www.citizenjazz.com/Bo-van-Der-Werf-3483426.html
– check this EP : 4 songs recorded with Magic Malik, Jozef Dumoulin, Cyrille Obermuller, Nelson Veras and Stéphane Galland :
https://open.spotify.com/album/7qIFFzGssqaInVRU4K7b0y?si=9yUdoakxSKiq1dMXTzB56g
– check ‘speaking kindly’, a duo with Jozef Dumoulin, released in october 2022 on PEE WEE
– for those interested : I uploaded our concert with OCTURN at KLAENG festival in Köln with the inspiring bass clarinetist Joris Roelofs as guest, and with the usual partners-in-crime Jozef Dumoulin on keyboards, Fabian fForini on piano and Dré Pallemaerts on drums / if you want to listen : visit the ‘listen’ page where you can listen to more music as well
-if you landed here because you want to know a bit more about OCTURN: www.octurn.com contains a large selection of materials from our recent projects and you can order cds if interested / I’ve been directing this ensemble for many years now / our latest project was created in april 2023 ‘the sandor verses’ , at BOZAR in Brussels and palais des beaux-arts de Charleroi / and recorded in paris for the PEE WEE label, for a new CD released in may 24 / bass clarinetist Joris Roelofs and a beautiful string trio ( Eugenie Defraigne on cello, Laure Bardet on violin and Esther Coorevits on alto ) join us on a series of new compositions, freely inspired by the string trio of hungarian composer Sandor Veress. In the meantime you can listen to this nice project / you can also check ‘GAMELAN’ = a collaboration between Octurn and the contemporary ensemble Ictus ( actually a project that took place 12 years ago but just came out ) I wrote the music, freely inspired by the modus operandi of the gamelan music / Octurn’s bandcamp page : https://octurn.bandcamp.com/
– if you landed here because you heard about a mysterious project featuring Tibetan singing monks, take some time to dive into this amazing website
– check the ‘mantra magnets’ project / this is a video of our first (ever!) ‘concert’ recorded in January 2021
– if you landed here because you want to know more about my documentary film on the great filmmaker Satyajit Ray and his photographer Nemai Ghosh, and you want to watch the film or explore the archives, here you go: http://manikda.space
if you have no idea how or why you landed here, my name is Bo van der Werf, and besides my main job as family’s official dog walker, i read books, i fight fascists, I play baritone saxophone, I try to compose nice music and I share my passion at the conservatory of Brussels and Antwerpen
these are some other projects I am also happy to play with :
TONNETZ : https://www-fourier.ujf-grenoble.fr/~faure/Modelisation_musicale/index.xhtml
lynn cassiers ‘YUN’ : https://lynncassiers.com/yun/
the workshop : http://www.stephanepayen.com
lidlboj : http://www.jozefdumoulin.com
…