Henk de Vlieger (Schiedam, 1953) studied at the Rotterdam Conservatory, succesively percussion with Willem Heesen and composition with Theo Loevendie and Klaas de Vries.
In 1976 he was appointed as percussionist and timpanist 'in general service' with the orchestras of the Netherlands Broadcasting Corporation (NOS).
From 1987 - 2002 Henk de Vlieger has been principal percussionist of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.
Henk de Vlieger worked with such conductors as: Ernest Bour, Jean Fournet, Riccardo Muti, Kirill Kondrashin, Kurt Sanderling, Mariss Jansons, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Herbert Blomstedt, Valeri Gergiev, Kent Nagano, Peter Eötvös, Mark Elder, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, and of course the Dutch masters: Willem van Otterloo, Bernard Haitink, Hans Vonk, Edo de Waart and Jaap van Zweden.
As a soloist Henk de Vlieger participated among other things in 'Concerto pour batterie et petit orchestre' by Darius Milhaud, 'La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ' and 'Saint François d'Assise' by Olivier Messiaen, 'Manhattan Concerto' by Siegfried Matthus and 'From me flows what you call Time' by Toru Takemitsu.
In addition to a modest number of compositions, Henk de Vlieger has produced dozens of arrangements of diverse kinds. He made instrumentations for theatre and film productions, arrangements for percussion ensemble (e.g. his remarkable instrumentation of Mussorgski's 'Pictures at an exhibition' for percussion orchestra) and orchestrations of works by Brahms and Dvorak. At the request of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and its chief conductor Edo de Waart he made three symphonic compilations of operas by Richard Wagner.
Henk de Vlieger is author of the 'Handbook for the orchestral percussion section'. This book describes the percussion sections in about 2000 orchestral compositions.
