Bio

Sid was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1961.
He studied piano with Bert van den Brink and Jasper van’t Hof in Utrecht and graduated in 1993 as a Master of Music.
He made his debut recording ‘Dunjin’s Dance’ (1993) as a band leader and composer with Hein van de Geyn on bass, André Ceccarelli on drums and Frank Burks on guitar.

Since summer 1994 Sid has been living in Finland.
He was head of the jazz department at the Central Ostrobothnian conservatory in Kokkola from 1994-2002.
In 1999 Sid moved to Helsinki where he has been working since as a freelance pianist and composer.

He has played weekly solo piano recitals in Helsinki’s famous Temppeliaukio Church since 2002.
Thousands of visitors have enjoyed his improvisations in over 670 concerts so far. The series continues.

Sid has received international critical acclaim with his bands Platypus Ensemble, Sid Hille Contemporary Collective and F#.
As a performer he concentrates nowadays on entirely improvised music.

Sid has composed orchestral music, chamber music, film music and various concertos for Big Band.
In 2008 he won the first prize at the international composition competition ‘Scrivere in Jazz’ in Sardegna, Italy, with the big band composition ‘Tango mòrbido y cìnico’.
The International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) chose Hille’s bigband composition ‘Felsenfest’ (2005) to be performed at the World New Music Days 2010 in Sydney, Australia.
Hille’s music for the feature film ‘Kohtaamisia/Heartbeats’ by Saara Cantell, 2010 was nominated for the Finnish Film Prize.
Two of Sid’s CD’s were nominated by the Finnish Broadcast Corporation for ‘Best recording of the year’: the string quartet recording ‘Farbformen’ (2017) and Sid’s solo piano recording ‘Here – Beyond The Infinite‘ (2020).

An important milestone on Sid’s path as a composer was the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s first performance of ‘Begehren‘ for mezzosoprano and string quartet in 2022, three songs based on poems by Gertrud Kolmar (1894-1943).