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Thomas (Tom) Dissevelt
(4 March 1921, Leiden – 1989) was a Dutch composer and musician. He is
known as a pioneer in the merging of electronic music and jazz. He
married Rina Reys, sister of Rita Reys in 1946. Tom Dissevelt was also
known as bassist / arranger in the Skymasters and helped on the records
of Rita Reijs. Between 1939 and 1944 Dissevelt studied at the Royal
Conservatory of The Hague. He took over three years in trombone lessons
and then went onto study clarinet, music theory and piano. He stopped
studying the clarinet because he was too busy and took bass lessons from
Herman Stotijn of the Residence Orchestra.
After the war Dissevelt moved to Indonesia with the Jos Cleber Orchestra
to work. He was in love with Rina Reys, and married her in 1946. In
1947 he did an international tour with Ilcken Wessel, the husband of
Rita Reys, and the orchestra of Piet van Dijk. This tour lasted three
years, where she acted in Spain and North Africa.
In 1955 Bep Rowold, leader of the Skymasters, hired Dissevelt as a
bassist and arranger. He became interested in 12-tone music, listened to
the many German radio stations, and heard works by Karlheinz
Stockhausen and Anton Webern. Recommended by Philips, he was invited to
the Natlab studios electronic music. Together with Dick Raaijmakers
(alias "Kid Baltan") he composed electronic music. Many of his
compositions are now heard on the record "Popular Electronics – Early
Dutch electronic music from Philips Research Laboratories, 1956–1963".
The way pop music was emerging and the changing of the way radio
stations operated (with the disbandment of radio orchestras) made
Dissevelt decide to give up working with orchestras. He became assistant
to renowned Dutch entertainers such as Wim Sonneveld and Toon Hermans.
Dick Raaymakers (also Raaijmakers; 1 September 1930 – 4 September 2013) was a Dutch composer, theater maker and theorist. He was known as a pioneer in the field of electronic music and tape music. In addition, he realized numerous music theater pieces, art installations, and has published many theoretical essays.
Raaymakers was born in Maastricht and studied the piano at the Royal
Conservatory of The Hague. From 1954 to 1960 he worked in the field of
electro-acoustic research at the NatLab of Royal Philips Electronics
Ltd. in Eindhoven. Using the alias Kid Baltan, he and Tom
Dissevelt formed Electrosoniks and produced some of the very first
electronic pop music. Jean-Jacques Perrey visited them at the time and
cited them as an inspiration. While at NatLab, Raaymakers assisted
Edgard Varèse with assembling his piece Poème électronique, commissioned
by Philips for Expo 58. From 1960 to 1962 he held an appointment as
scientific staff member at the University of Utrecht. From 1963 to 1966
he collaborated with Jan Boerman in his own studio for electronic music
in the Hague. He was one of the co-founders of STEIM, the STudio for
Electro-Instrumental Music. In 1966 he founded the electronic music
studio at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and lectured on electronic
and contemporary music until his retirement in 1995. From 1991 he
taught music theatre at the Image and Sound Interfaculty at the same
conservatory. He died on the third of September, 2013. His archives are
preserved at the Netherlands Music Institute.