Who is Ruben?
Educated in both mathematics and music and recently employed as an economist, Ruben Naeff (1981) finds himself in an attempt to comprehend the world and set it to music. His love for mathematics led him to write De Bètacanon (The Scientific Canon), a paean for science that was commissioned by the Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant and in which the fifty scientific topics of the newspaper's eponymous project were sung in a canon in four voices. The financial crash of 2008 inspired him to write The Dancing Dollar, in which he set both Citigroup's share price and its former chairman's words to music, and where he asked the Dollar for a dance. After that, many economically inspired pieces came to life, including a businessman's Elevator Pitch for solo flute and a neoliberal creed Credo for chamber choir, with texts from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Ruben embraces all kinds of music and strives to write music that inspires and moves.
Ruben obtained his master's degree in mathematics from the University of Amsterdam, where he majored in abstract algebraic geometry. During these years, he also studied musicology at the University of Amsterdam, and received composition lessons from Daan Manneke at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and Gilius van Bergeijk at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. After his graduation, he was employed at an international strategy consultant firm and as an economist at the Dutch Competition Authority. Currently, he is a recipient of the HSP Huygens Talent Scholarship from the Dutch government to study composition with Michael Gordon in a master's program at New York University. For recent works, Ruben received grants from the prestigious Jerome Fund for New Music (JFund) of the American Composers Forum, the Van Bijleveltstichting and Stichting Fonds voor de Geld- en Effectenhandel.
Ruben has collaborated with numerous people and organizations from a wide range of disciplines. He is co-founder of the
West 4th New Music Collective, which promotes the work of emerging composers in New York. Ruben has worked with renowned musicians from Bang on a Can and the vocal quartet Quatre Bouches and a variety of organizations such as de Volkskrant, the debate & fine arts festival happyChaos and Platform Bèta-Techniek. He has joined forces with such public figures as NRC Handelsblad economics editor Maarten Schinkel, scientists and (former) presidents of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences Robbert Dijkgraaf and Frits van Oostrom, and the Dutch cartoonist Jean-Marc van Tol - and many more.
Interested? Ruben is always looking for new fascinating projects, purely musical or interdisciplinary, commercial
or not-for-profit, either commissioned by clients, or initiated by other musicians and artists. Please contact him
if you are interested and would like to learn more about all possibilities.
Download this biography in pdf.
