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Buma NL Lifetime Achievement Award for Thomas Tol

Placed: Thursday, September 20, 2018 8:46:43 PM
Modified: Friday, September 21, 2018 8:24:59 AM

Today Thomas Tol received the Buma NL Lifetime Achievement Award from Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science. The Volendam composer was totally surprised with the handing over by the Minister. He received the award in the presence of his wife and son, who had been sent to The Hague under false pretenses for this special ceremony.

Thomas Tol receives the Buma NL Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as a composer. Tol has built up an impressive and successful oeuvre over the past four decades and is therefore invaluable for Dutch music culture. In addition, Thomas Tol is the founder of the so-called eelsound; the characteristic 'Volendam sound' with which, among other things, BZN would become world famous.

Minister Van Engelshoven: "Thomas Tol has played an important role in the development of Dutch music, both in front of and behind the scenes, and is one of the founders of a sound that can be heard far beyond Volendam for many years. And the songs of life are, thanks to Tol, an idea, and popular with many Dutch people, even with me, by the way, I recently joined Hazes during a theater festival in Amsterdam."

Thomas Tol is known as a BZN keyboard player. He acquires fame as a composer; his songs and melodies are known and loved by a large audience and are appreciated by young and old. From the beginning of the seventies until now Tol has composed more than 300 songs; dozens of hits and many number-1 hits for BZN, Tol & Tol, Annie Schilder and recently Jan Smit.

In the seventies and eighties, Tol was responsible for almost all hits from BZN; in that period he composed more than twenty hits of which eighteen reached the Top 10 of the National hit parade. Mon Amour and Pearlydumm even achieved a number-1 listing.

Jan Smit
After his success with BZN Thomas starts with his brother and guitarist Cees, who was also part of BZN, the formation Tol & Tol. It results in an international career and the number-1 hit Eleni. Since 2002, the duo has continued to produce the albums of the popular Volendam singer Jan Smit. Thomas Tol composes and produces - along with his brother and lyricist Cees - dozens of hits for Jan Smit in the following years, with four number-1 notations including 'Als de morgen is gekomen' and 'Dan volg je haar benen'. With his talent, sense of melody, compositional craftsmanship and in collaboration with his brother, Thomas has made a crucial contribution to the success of Jan Smit's music career.

Buma NL Lifetime Achievement Award
Every year Buma NL awards the Lifetime Achievement Award to a composer-lyricist who has made a valuable contribution to Dutch music culture for a longer period of time with his/her compositions and/or lyrics.

Previous winners of the Buma NL Lifetime Achievement Award are:
2013: André Hazes (posthumous)
2014: Pierre Kartner (Vader Abraham)
2015: Normaal
2016: Gerard Joling
2017: Lenny Kuhr

[Source: www.buma.nl]

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