Aidan Mikdad

A Conversation

For Aidan, a concert is never just a performance. It’s a conversation.

He spends a real part of his life performing for students and younger audiences — not playing at them, but talking with them. What makes this piece move the way it does? Why did Scriabin write like someone on fire? What are you actually hearing right now?

The Shape of a Tale

The same curiosity shapes everything he programmes. He likes to mix things up — pairing music with literature, bringing in film scores, building an evening that has a thread anyone can follow, whether they grew up with classical music or have never been to a recital in their life.

That connection between music and storytelling goes back a long way. When he was twelve, Dan Brown’s Dutch publisher called — one week before the writer himself was appearing at the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam for the launch of Inferno Could Aidan arrange Liszt’s Dante Symphony for solo piano and perform it on the night?

Music for Everyone

He said yes. The audience hadn’t come for a piano recital. They came for Dan Brown. And somehow, Liszt and Dante fit right in.

After one concert, a man came up to him — not a regular, just someone who had wandered in. He wanted to say thank you for the Scriabin. “I would have spent my whole life,” he said, “not knowing this great mind ever existed.”

He has performed at large public gatherings and community celebrations — including Amsterdam’s Gay Pride — because music connects most powerfully when it meets people where they already are.