'Composing is exploring. You often need to create your own map, that includes some bits of maps made by others before you. Composing is also very associative - finding ingredients to combine, anticipating how they might interact, finding out what their chemistry is. In terms of ideas, textures, sounds, colours. I would love to help you think about what it is that you want, and how to get that from musicians.'
About the teacher
Wilma Pistorius (1991) is a South-African-born composer and cellist based in Amsterdam. After moving to the Netherlands in 2004, she studied composition with Wim Henderickx and Jorrit Tamminga at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and cello with Jeroen den Herder at Codarts Rotterdam, graduating in 2013 and 2014 respectively.
Since 2024 she has been teaching composing for strings at ArtEZ Conservatory in Arnhem, where she also began teaching composition as a main subject in 2025. Alongside this she is active as a performer and maintains a cello teaching practice, and she occasionally coaches conservatory students in contemporary music performance.
Pistorius’ work often originates in conceptual questions, sensory experiences and vivid mental images.
She translates these into music by means of colour, texture and musical gesture, drawing on the expressive possibilities of instruments and the distinctive qualities of performers for whom she writes. Her experience as a cellist strongly informs her compositional practice: she is fascinated by the physicality of instruments, the individuality of performers, and the creative possibilities that emerge through collaboration. Her musical worlds balance precision with imagination, seriousness with playfulness, and are often rooted in the transformation of inner landscapes and reactions into sound.
Pistorius is composer in residence at Festival Dag in de Branding for the seasons 2025–2027. She is currently developing an interdisciplinary music theatre work for six musicians, three performers and electronics, exploring the relationship between musical, theatrical and perceptual experience.
Her works have been performed at Dutch festivals and venues including Gaudeamus, November Music and CelloBiennale Amsterdam, as well as internationally in Germany, all four Scandinavian countries, the US, New Zealand and Australia. In 2022 she received first prize in CoMA Maastricht’s composition competition for Open Score pieces for amateurs.
