David van Ooijen is a soloist and accompanist mainly on various lutes, baroque guitar, romantic guitar and shamisen, but he also plays continuo with various ensembles and orchestras. He has played at the Festivals of Utrecht, Flanders, Wratislawa, Osnabrück, Dubrovnik, Cambrils, Seviqc Breice and Tehran. He recorded around 30 CDs with various ensembles.
In 1991, the BBC made solo recordings of him and in 1998 he won the Friends' Prize of the Early Music Foundation. In 2000 and 2009, he was a guest in Hirado, Japan, to give concerts and workshops. In Hirado, he also developed his love for traditional Japanese music and learned to play the shamisen. In 2003 and 2008, he and soprano Chiyomi Yamada made concert tours of Japan with a programme of Japanese songs of which a CD was also published. In 2004 and 2005, his first two CDs with alto Sytse Buwalda were at the top of Dutch radio's classical top 50 for a long time. In 2006, with fellow alto Michiel Niessen, he made a CD on which all the duets of the 16e-century lute virtuoso Terzi stand. This recording received rave reviews worldwide.
In 2007, David van Ooijen played at the christening ceremony of Princess Ariane, daughter of Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Máxima.
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