Niels van der Leest has been played on NTS in shows including Tafelmusik w/ Francesco Fusaro, featured first on 18 January 2025. Songs played include Within The Embrace.

Niels van der Leest (born in Enschede on October 22 1976) studied classical percussion on the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam. During and after getting his Master degree Niels played in some of the best orchestras in Holland and was a player in the successful percussion group Circle Percussion.

Niels is still playing in AbSurdo (THE samba group of Holland), teaches percussion on a couple of music schools and conducts a percussion group in Houten, Holland.

After some years of performing as a professional percussionist Niels decides to listen to his urge to write down his musical ideas instead of only playing the notes someone else wrote. His biggest dream being: writing the music to a computer game. His love for the medium games started when he played Final Fantasy VII, which was accompanied by music of the Japanese composer Nobuo Uematsu.

Niels is working on fulfilling his dreams and starts arranging and remixing game music for his percussion students. When his arrangements are played with lots of fun, the performances lead to enthusiastic reactions and more requests for “his” music start coming in he starts writing original music. In 2007 Niels won the publics prize in the Interface SoundGame Contest with 46,4% of the votes.

In the course of the years Niels has worked on a lot of award winning games, commissioned works, tracks for commercials and sing-a-song writers and of course his solo albums.

Niels has proven to be a market-oriented composer, arranger and sound designer, with high quality, professionalism and originality as his top priorities.

“Writing to enhance instead of distract”