Daan van Aalst is an independent Recording Producer / Sound Engineer. He is involved in recording projects with both classical and contemporary music in the Netherlands and abroad.
He began his own firm to work with musicians in order to realise and produce, high quality recording projects. From 2003 onwards he worked for almost eight years together with pianist Rian de Waal on his transcription recordings for his project ‘Metamorphoses, the art of the virtuoso piano transcription’. The project came out as a book with six audio albums attached. Daan worked as recording producer and balance engineer with artists such as Pieter Wispelweij, Harro Ruijsenaars, Rubens Kwartet, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra with Joshua Bell, Hidemi Suzuki, Sarah Kapustin, Charlotte Margiono en Frans Ehlhart, het Ragazze Kwartet, Chie Hirai, Symfonieorkest van Vlaanderen, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Joop Celis en Klaartje van Veldhoven. Besides the recording projects, Daan worked as studio co-ordinator and radio technician for the Dutch national radio until 2013.
Daan started his own international record label Navis Classics in 2013. Both national and international artists such as Noé Inui, Vassilis Varvaresos, Naum Grubert, Joachim Eijlander, Dimitris Tiliakos, the Zemtsov Viola Quartet and Ensemble Houthandel release their albums on the label.
Daan van Aalst graduated in 2002 from the Royal Conservatoire where he studied Art of Sound. In his second phase programme, he worked on a project about classical music and surround sound recording. During his time at the Conservatoire he worked as an intern at Channel Classics Records and Polyhymnia International, the former Philips Classics recording centre.
After his graduation he continued working as a freelance recording engineer for companies like Channel Classics, Polyhymnia International, De Haske/Hal Leonard and Da Capo. He worked with artists such as Rachel Podger, Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the Concertgebouworkest, Mitsuko Uchida, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hans Vonk and many others.
Daan started as a teacher at the Art of Sound department in the 2010-2011 season and nowadays works as main subject teacher ‘recording’, project co-ordinator and label manager.