How do you make it ... Liesa Van der Aa

Liesa Van der Aa (1986) is a Belgian composer, musician, singer, and actress.

How are you doing?

I'm doing well. I have a lot to do, feel energetic, and am full of plans. Summer is in the air (the interview dates back to June '26, editor's note) and that gives me a kind of sparkling drive to create. This is how the performance 'HUNTER' and my latest album 'Caramel' came to be.

'HUNTER' is a music theater performance, while 'Caramel' is a pop album. That combination may seem surprising, but for me, it feels very natural. I have a background in music theater, both as a director and an actress, and I love to move between different disciplines. Pop culture plays just as much of a role in that.

Whether I'm working on an album that plays on the radio or sounds in someone's headphones, or on a performance on stage: for me, it all belongs to the same creative process. I look at the world around me and translate what I see and feel into music.

Whether it's pop or music theater, it always starts from that same feeling. Blending those worlds is not a conscious choice for me, but a matter of course. This is how my work emerges: as a fusion of everything that inspires me.

Why do you create it?

'HUNTER' arose from a concrete request from the Neuköllner Oper: to create a piece inspired by a pop album. Together with Rainer Simon, the artistic director, I chose 'Homogenic' by Björk. Her music has shaped me, and that album touches the core of love for me - the tension, the attraction and repulsion, the expectations that come with it.

This theme closely aligns with 'Caramel', my own recent album. Love is also central to it, in all its complexity. In this way, both projects began to enter into a dialogue with each other.

For me, creating - whether it's a music theater piece or a pop album - always feels very natural and intuitive. 'Caramel' was developed over a period of six years, as a collage of ideas, experiments, and improvisations with various musicians. Along the way, it grew into a cohesive whole with its own sound world: pop, but with influences of minimalist soul and a touch of jazz.

'HUNTER' breathes a similar atmosphere. You can feel that both projects emerged during the same period of my life - that they are nourished by the same questions, feelings, and inspiration.

WHO ARE YOU WORKING WITH?

For ‘HUNTER’, I am working with a Berlin vocal ensemble: B O D I E S. The driving force behind that group is Kat Frankie. They are all impressive singers and performers, and I felt honored and grateful that they agreed to my proposal to create a piece specifically for them, intended for the theater.

B O D I E S is not only exceptionally professional but also a close-knit, warm, and energetic team. Their sense of collaboration, focus, and humor makes it a pleasure to work with them. Additionally, I am involving Naomi Beeldens, an old schoolmate and good friend with whom I have collaborated before. She is an opera singer and leads her own collective, Les Âmes Perdues.

Bringing together different worlds is essential for me. Naomi brings her background in opera and theater, while B O D I E S comes more from the pop side. It is precisely that mix of styles, genres, and voices that creates an exciting and vibrant whole on stage.

For ‘Caramel’, I worked with a smaller group of musicians, although I also played a large part of the instruments myself. An important partner is Niels Broos, a fantastic pianist and sound artist from the Netherlands. His musical background is broad - from hip-hop to jazz and contemporary classical, and you can hear it. We are not only colleagues but also friends, and his sense of harmonic textures immediately touched me.

I met Niels during earlier recording sessions for ‘Easy Alice’, an album I made about five years ago. Since then, our collaboration has continued to grow. I also worked with drummer James Williams, a powerful soul and funk drummer who lives in Antwerp but grew up in the USA, and with bassist Dries Lahey.

‘Caramel’ ultimately became a true collage - a puzzle of ideas, improvisations, and sounds. We often worked from spontaneous sessions, after which I went on to shape and build each detail. Layer by layer, the album grew, and I was, as it were, behind the controls to distill new songs from those improvisations.

Thus, ‘Caramel’ was born: organic, playful, and with great attention to every nuance.