Think of someone who has an idea, transforms it into a plan, gets people excited about it, creates a team for it, figures out the finances, puts the plan in action and performs it himself.

Hello, IÂ’m Dominique.
What do I do? Good question. I like to describe myself as a one-man-band, or maybe a concept-artist. Many people describe me as a virtuosic, versatile percussionist who can play many different kinds of drums. Others would say I am a crazy creative guy who would go the distance to realize great ideas.

I am also an international artist—I have travelled around the world performing in Brazil, China, Japan, Russia, Norway, Germany and many other countries. After coming back from these tours, my head is often filled with various new ideas and inspirations which I would bring to my company Combined Creatives. I founded this company for creative minds to gather together to develop out-of-the-box concepts and make them into reality. So if you are a musician, filmmaker, designer, photographer, or a director, as long as you are creative, you are welcome to this collective where everyone can collaborate with one another. Meanwhile my team will take care of your bookings and provide you management advices and service.

Sounds pretty cool right?

And I do love playing drums and everything about rhythm—I won the first prize, press prize and audience award of the 2014 TROMP International Percussion Competition. I graduated cum laude from the Conservatory of Amsterdam, and I curated a special percussion project on ‘Child Soldier’ which won the AHK art prize that is awarded to the most outstanding exam of all the art schools in Amsterdam. So you see, playing drums only does not satisfy my curiosity and creativity.

But I have to admit that it is quite exhilarating when I get to play solo with an orchestra, like I did with the Asko||Schönberg ensemble, Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and the Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic. Recently I played in a sold-out Main Hall of the Concertgebouw and made a live CD recording with pianist Ivo Janssen and the Mallet Collective Amsterdam. It was a beautiful and glorious moment of my musical journey.

My latest project is entitled Playground—my team and I combine film-, minimal- and club music with live percussion and perform in nightclubs. We developed an earlier project called Playground the concert with similar objectives for a sold-out Small Hall of the Concertgebouw. All these experiments are pretty exciting!

I am really grateful to have the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds and the Stichting Eigen Muziekinstrument for supporting my huge instrument collection.

If you want to read more about my story, I invite you to my website www.dominiquevleeshouwers.com, or sent me a message for a cup of coffee :)

Cheers.

Dominique