History

I got a rather classical upbringing, hearing mostly classical music at home and starting to play cello when I was nine years old. During high school I gradually acquired an interest in other kinds of music, which made me pick up guitar and later bass guitar. I changed from cello to double bass when I was eighteen. Soon after I started studying classical Double Bass at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, with Jean-Paul Everts and Knut Guettler. At this school I did both my Bachelor and Master study. For a while I studied as well at the jazz department with Hein van de Geyn en Frans van der Hoeven.

A few years after graduating I picked up the cello again. I use it mostly for my own projects, when I compose and when I play with bands like Alamo Race Track and AWKWARD I.

In the last years at the conservatory I focused on contemporary music and improvisation. At the same time music theatre productions provided an environment where I could use every kind of music that inspired me, as long as it served the dramaturgy.  At first creating music and performing would go hand in hand, later I would also start to be engaged in the creating process off stage. Either composing and recording a soundtrack, or advising directors/choreographers on the use of music in their performance. From those experiences I learned that the parameters of music are very useful tools to give a performance its final shape, which led to doing dramaturgy and montage. The realization that music is in every action has been a big inspiration ever since.