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Tom Dissevelt
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Tom Dissevelt, in full Thomas Dissevelt, was a Dutch composer, arranger and musician. He was born in 1921 and between 1939 and 1944 studied at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, first trombone, then clarinet, music theory and piano. Later he learned double bass with Herman Stotijn of the Residentie Orchestra. After the war he worked in Indonesia and made a three-year tour taking in Spain and North Africa, among other places. In 1955 he became bassist and arranger of the Skymasters. In 1946 he married Rina Reys, the sister of the jazz singer Rita Reys, and also contributed to recordings of hers.
Music and breakthrough
The work that made him famous came about in 1958, when, on the advice of Philips, he was invited to the electronic music studio of the Physics Laboratory in Eindhoven. There he worked with Dick Raaijmakers, a Philips engineer who recorded under the name Kid Baltan. They made music with test oscillators, tapes, filters and reverberation chambers, and cut and stacked tape into pieces that united jazz rhythms with laboratory electronics. This became one of the first European attempts to combine electronic sound with a structured pop form. In 1958 their single Song of the Second Moon appeared. In 1959 the EP Electronic Movements followed, then The Fascinating World of Electronic Music. His solo album Fantasy in Orbit from 1964 was more melodic and spacious. In 2003 David Bowie counted The Fascinating World of Electronic Music among his twenty-five favourite albums.
Influence
Because pop music was rising and radio orchestras were being disbanded, in 1965 Dissevelt went to work with Wim Sonneveld as a bassist. He died in 1989. His work was far ahead of its time: it showed the public what new technology could do with music.
Listening
Discography
Studio albums
- 1957Her Name Is Rita Reys
- 1959The Fascinating World of Electronic Music
- 1962Electronic Movements
- 1965Fantasy In Orbit: An Astronaut's Impressions While Orbiting The Earth
- 1968Song of the Second Moon
In School of Rock
The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.
- Mixtape 8: Electronic MusicNL Reader
Mentioned in other articles
- Electronic studio and musique concrète Genre
And at Philips in Eindhoven Dick Raaijmakers and Tom Dissevelt worked.