Richard Tolenaar was born the first October of 1960 in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. His musical career, although he always had been obsessed by music, started when he received his first classical guitar in 1977. After a year of self-study he heard a concert by the Urugaian master-guitarist Antonio Pereira-Arias. From that moment he knew he wanted to learn to play the instrument and everything about music-performing from this man. In 1979, he was accpeted to the Royal Conservatory in The Hague as a student of Pereira-Arias, who in fact educated him as a guitarist as well as teaching him to play the double-bass (he himself beeing an excellent performer on this instrument).

Richard finished the conservatory as a guitarist and a double-bass player, after wich he started playing the latter instrument in several Dutch orchestras and smaller ensembles. After 5 years of doing so, he decided that he had to choose his true ambition: music-composition.

After some education in writing filmmusic at the conservatory in Hilversum , he accepted his first employment as a composer for Dutch television. In addition, he began creating compositions for smaller classical ensembles as well as some electronic compositions.

At present, he composes for television, classical ensembles and also writes pop-songs for several Dutch artists. He is living in Amersfoort, Holland with his wife, a solo-violist in the Dutch Metropole Orchestra.

If you would like to email Mr. Tolenaar and express your gratitude for his music, click here: Richard Tolenaar.
If you would like to visit Mr. Tolenaar's WWW page, follow this link: Richard Tolenaar's Home Page"