NUYTS, Gaston

Gaston Nuyts was born on 26 March 1922 in Deurne. Starting in 1943 he produced an almost unbroken series of arrangements of original compositions, both for small ensembles and for symphonic orchestra. From 1971 to 1987 he taught recording engineering at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels. He often served as a jury member for competitions both in Belgium and abroad. Gaston Nuyts conducted many concerts and studio recordings for radio, television and theatre (KNS Antwerp, KVS Brussels, Alhambra Brussels, Carré Amsterdam). In 1965 as a conductor he accompanied Lize Marke at the Eurovision Song Festival with the entry Als het weer lente is by Jef van den Berg. Nuyts worked for the Belgian public broadcasting corporation (NIR and later BRT) until 1983, and also conducted for other national broadcaster corporations including the NOS (the Netherlands) and the BBC. In 1955 he became a commission member of Sabam (artists’ union), subsequently becoming a member of its board (1969) and then chief administrator (1990). Until 2001 he was chairman of Uradex, an association for performance rights, and was music advisor for the Province of Antwerp until 1993. A number of Nuyts’s compositions have won prizes. In 1961 he received a television Oscar for the program Wereldmelodieën. The television program Deep River won the Bert Leysen Prize. In 1966 he received the Franz Andelhof Prize from Sabam for his folksong arrangements. Nuyts was also awarded the Province of Antwerp composition prize in 1976 for his chamber music work Bi-Triptychon for flute, violin, bassoon and harpsichord. In 2005, finally, he won the European choral composition prize Die goldene Stimmgabel from AGEC for the a capella choral work Canticum Canticorum Salomonis.

©2007 Gudrun Dewilde, voor Matrix

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