Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland (1994), Massimo Raoul Beckers started playing music from an early age onwards. At the age of nine he moved to Maastricht, the Netherlands. Here he started studying the piano, but switched to the guitar at age thirteen. The love for this instrument expanded his view on music enormously. In a couple of years he had gotten himself familiar with an array of various plucked stringed instruments, while exploring various plying techniques and styles of music. He went to study at the University of Maastricht (UM), graduating as a Bachelor of Arts & Culture in 2017, after which he moved to Amstelveen and later Amsterdam to study at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Here he graduated as a Master of Musicology with his final thesis Shaping the Soundscape History (2018), to be found here, as well as finishing a minor in Religious Studies, where he focussed on the role of music in Islamic mysticicism and traditional Sufi rituals. He decided to follow-up with a much more direct form of musical education and entered the Utrechts Conservatory of Music (HKU) and moved to Utrecht in 2018. Here his main subject became twofold, as he studied both bass guitar and composition, of which the latter became more and more dominant throughout the second, third and fourth years of his studies. Some of his teachers at HKU were Bart Soeters, Ned McGowan, Wiek Hijmans and Albert van Veenendaal. In his last year at the conservatory, Massimo decided to enter the Meerjarige Dirigentenopleiding (MDO), a studies focussed on choral conducting and conducting as a whole, which he was able to finish within a year. Some of his conducting teachers were Hans Noijens and Dennis Broeders. After graduating from both studies, Massimo moved to Zeist, Utrecht, where he is currently based.

As a composer, Massimo focusses predominantly on the urgency of listening, especially essential in an ever-growing urban habitat with a constantly-changing environment. His academic studies on soundscape ecology have definitely played a key role in manifesting this concept into his compositions. Equally, Massimo advocates the importance of concepts like art for art’s sake and the autonomy of music in his work.

As a conductor, Massimo’s interests lay mainly in ‘contemporary classical’ and ‘Romantic’ era music. He has experience in both choral and instrumental conducting.

As a teacher, Massimo has gathered more than seven years of experience in teaching private, group and online classes. You can find him on several platforms, like Gallery of Tones and Muziekonderwijs.nl. Working for companies such as Online Muziek Cursus and Online Muziek Academie he has gained a lot of experience building and recording video lesson packages for various musical disciplines. Massimo currently focusses on teaching composition and music theory, but also provides lessons in solfeggio/ear training, bass guitar, guitar & coaching.