Praised as “quick, quirky, and rambunctious,” Ruben Naeff is a Dutch-American composer living in Brooklyn, New York. His varied background in mathematics and music led to surprising collaborations, such as De Bètacanon, a musical canon as a love song to science, which he wrote for De Volkskrant. Ruben studied with Michael Gordon and Daan Manneke, and holds degrees from NYU and the University of Amsterdam. His music has been performed across the US, Europe, Asia and Australia.
The Cult of Pythagoras, a podcast opera
A subway passenger records a mysterious guitar player who sings about a lethal number. Her song grows into an opera about the cult of Pythagoras, who razed a city to the ground, murdered his beloved student, and forbade his followers to eat beans.
JACKASS
JACK QUARTET
The dazzling JACK Quartet plays JACKASS, a highly energetic journey with the pace of New York City through twelve tone melodies, 1990s dance 'house' harmonies and Balkan rhythms, sticking to a single love but still chasing wild adventure.
De Bètacanon
QUATRE BOUCHES et al.
In De Bètacanon, the fifty scientific topics from de Volkskrant’s eponymous project are sung in a musical canon in four voices, interwoven with love songs for DNA, enzymes, prime numbers and entropy. The result is a canon as a love song to science.