His music has streamed nearly 700 million times on Spotify. Now the phenomenon Joep Beving is returning to the Opera.
"Simple music for complex emotions" – this is how Joep Beving describes his own compositions. With his soft piano minimalism, the Dutchman has risen to become one of the most played pianists of our time, landing on playlists alongside artists like Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds, and Nils Frahm.
On September 20, he will be back in the grand hall of Bjørvika again, as one of the stops on a new tour – featuring his latest album Liminal.
Score for a hopeful future
With the album, Beving focuses on themes of change, uncertainty, and renewal, exploring how sound can create space for reflection and connection in a world in constant motion.
– The world is a hectic place, says the pianist himself. – I feel a deep urge to restore contact with people in general, on a fundamental human level. Music as a universal language has the power to unite. Regardless of our cultural differences, I believe we have an innate understanding of what it means to be human. We have our goosebumps to refer to.
About Joep Beving
Joep Beving has been one with the piano since childhood, but had to interrupt his music education due to a wrist injury. Instead, he educated himself in politics and public administration – but the love for music persisted, and when he inherited a piano from his grandmother in 2009, it blossomed anew. The Schimmel piano insisted on a gentler touch and a graceful tempo, leading Beving to change his playing style and adapt to a more classical vocabulary.
At 38, he released his debut album Solipsism in 2014 – quickly moving from being an unknown pianist to playing at the Cannes advertising film festival and landing on Spotify's Peaceful Piano playlist. Soon, his music found its way to the management at Deutsche Grammophon, the world's foremost classical record label. The release of his second album Prehension made Joep one of the most played living pianists in the world in 2017.
