Sebastian Huydts

Associate Professor
Coordinator of Keyboard Studies
Email: shuydts@colum.edu

Sebastian Huydts studied piano in Amsterdam with Edith Lateiner-Grosz at the Sweelinck Conservatory. He took post-graduate classes with Rian de Waal, György Sebök, Stephen Bishop, and Earl Wild. He has performed solo, with orchestra and in chamber music throughout Northern Europe and the Midwestern USA and has appeared on Dutch, Spanish and Chicagoland radio.

In 1993, the University of Chicago awarded him a four-year stipend to study Composition. His professors there included John Eaton, Jay Alan Yim, Andrew Imbrie, Shulamit Ran and Marta Ptaszynska, Howard Sandroff, Barbara Schubert, and Cliff Colnot. While there he received the Paul and Olga Menn prize for original compositions. His works include song cycles, sonatas, chamber music for various combinations, symphonic works and concertos.

Huydts has received commissions from organizations such as the Rhijnauwen Festival, the DuPage Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, the Rembrandt Chamber Players, The Orion Ensemble, and Vents de Barcelona, as well as from artists Marion van den Akker, Keith Conant, Katinka Kleijn, Claire Chase, Eric Lamb, Noé Cantú and Elizabeth Ko. In 2004, his Music for Flute and Piano, recorded by Mary Stolper for Cedille Records, received a favorable review in the Gramophone. He has been composer-in-residence with and member of Chicago’s New Music Ensemble CUBE. In this position, he received a grant from the American Composer’s Forum to write music for children’s concerts.

Sebastian Huydts has taught at the College of the University of Chicago, Lake Forest College, Northwestern University and at the Merit School of Music. Aside from his activities at the college level, he has co-taught orchestration with Cliff Colnot in the MFA Music Composition for the Screen program.

He performs with CUBE and with musicians from the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya. In Spain he is represented by Musicantes concert management. As of late 2009, his work is published by Jeanné of Minneapolis.