Walter van Dyk

Early life

Van Dyk is the son of Dutch composer Rudi Martinus van Dijk and the Montessori educator Jeanne Elisabeth Anna Koning. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, van Dyk was educated at Hull High School in Hull, Massachusetts in the United States, and later studied acting with Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghof (HB) Studios in New York and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. He later studied singing at Trinity College of Music in London.

Career

Walter van Dyk co-stars with Felicity Dean in the World Premiere of a new play This Thing called Love by Shelley Silas directed by Ben Caplan on August 31st, 2015 as part of a repertory season of four new plays in London. He has performed in Olivier Award nominated shows in the West End and worked with some of Britain's finest directors Richard Eyre, Stephen Unwin, Jeremy Sams, Rachel Kavanaugh, and Brigid Larmour. He most recently played the title role of Krapp in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape in London.

He also performed with Angela Hewitt and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra at the Trasimeno Music Festival in Umbria, Italy on July 7th, 2015 in Poulenc's L'Histoire du Babar and Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat. In May 2015 he returned from the United States where he performed O Moon of Alabama: A Kurt Weill Cabaret with Liza Sadovy as a Yellow Barn Music Festival and Dallas Symphony Orchestra co-production in the Soluna International Arts and Music Festival in Dallas, Texas. Later this year, he will return once again to the Watford Palace Theatre for their Christmas show Dick Whittington directed by Brigid Larmour. A Sci-fi thriller feature film The Carrier is also to be released in 2015.

Recent work includes O Moon of Alabama: A Kurt Weill Cabaret at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the role of Charles Mowbray in the Ronald Harwood play Equally Divided directed by Brigid Larmour at the Watford Palace Theatre, the world premiere of Insufficiency by Carl Djerassi at the Riverside Studios in London, the Marquis de Tarapote and the Old Prisoner in Garsington Opera's production of Offenbach's La Perichole directed by Jeremy Sams, The Importance of Being Earnest with Jane Asher directed by Stephen Unwin at the Rose Theatre in Kingston upon Thames and the Lyric Theatre in the Hong Kong International Arts Festival. Walter played Herr Schwarz in Feydeau's A Flea in her Ear at the Old Vic Theatre alongside Tom Hollander directed by Richard Eyre.

Van Dyk made his first professional American stage debut in March 1980 at the American Repertory Theatre in the ART's inaugural production of A Midsummer Night's Dream playing Snug, the joiner later transferring to the Wilbur Theatre in Boston with Cherry Jones. Since then Van Dyk has worked on both sides of the Atlantic. London West End theatre includes the London Evening Standard Award nominated Enter the Guardsman with Janie Dee directed by Jeremy Sams at the Donmar Warehouse, the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Michael Pennington, the Duke in Two Gentlemen of Verona directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, and the role of George Ketteridge in the Olivier Award nominated production of Cole Porter's High Society. Van Dyk appeared in the USA in 2005 in the Yellow Barn Music Festival production in Amherst, Massachusetts of Peter Maxwell Davies Eight Songs for a Mad King. In the Netherlands, he appeared with his own ensemble, Van Dyk & Company, in a production of songs by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.

Van Dyk's work for television includes the lead role of Pieter in the BBC Screenplay Can't Stop me Dreaming directed by Bernard Rudden (1992), and roles in The Detectives, Birds of a Feather, Framed, The Basil Brush Show, London's Burning and Love Hurts. Van Dyk most recently appeared with Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell in Kevin MacDonald's latest film The Eagle (2011) released in the UK March 18th, 2011. He played the role of Thoolen in the movie Incognito with Irene Jacob and Jason Patric.

Van Dyk has made a specialty as narrator of classical chamber music. In June 2015 he narrated the poetry of Mark Strand in Haydn's Seven Words of Christ on the Cross which he did initially with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and now in the Peasmarsh Chamber Music Festival. He played the Devil in June 2014 in Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale with Edward Fox and Matthew Sharp at the North Aldborough Chamber Music Festival, and narrated the entire work for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic's Ensemble 10/10. Last August he performed The Seafarer, translated from the Anglo-Saxon by Charles Harrison-Wallace, in a musical setting by Sally Beamish, at the Lincolnshire International Chamber Music Festival broadcast on BBC Radio 3. In 2007 he toured the production of Igor Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale as the Narrator with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields at Wilton's Music Hall in London and throughout the UK. He has performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, the Cheltenham International Music Festival, and in the United States for Collage New Music in Boston as well as with the Peabody Trio in Chicago, San Francisco, and Boulder, Colorado. Other festivals include Music for Salem in NY, the Yellow Barn Music Festival in Vermont, and the Portland Chamber Music Festival in Portland, Maine.

Photography

See vandyckphotography.com