HONK & PRONK: Two days of Streetbands
On Sunday Oct 12th I went to the Honk festival in Harvard square that has been going on for a while. Three days of parade, taptoe, street and swing bands. What a blast, I was so happy that I saw…
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Summer hang with Jernej & Tina
Here are just some pictures of my tour-week with Jernej Bervar from Slovenia. Jernej is a fantastic guitar player and he and his girlfriend stayed with us in Leiden, Netherlands. We had a blast, lots of concerts, played for Beatrix…
Terence Blanchard in the Bimhuis
Just a couple of days after I got back to the Netherlands for my summerbreak, Terence Blanchard was playing with his band in the Bimhuis. He invited me and Ted to come to the show. It was packed, and everybody…
Sleutelstad 071 Concert
On July 16th, 2014 there was a live radio show in Leiden, Scheltema from Radio Sleutelstad Fm. There were a lot of bands performing an evening of music. I had the fortune to play with two amazing peeps: Frans Heemskerk…
Article in NRC next
Yesterday my name appeared in the Nrc Next – a Dutch national Newspaper. It was an article by Anouk Vleugels about crowdfunding. It tells about new ways to fund your studies, like I did before going to Berklee. Actually I’m…
Songwriting workshop @ Leiden University LAK
This summer I was teaching a summer workshop week for the University of Leiden at their cultural center (called LAK.) The goal was to write and record your own song in 4 days. During the first day we spoke about…
Concert with Lee Konitz & Florian Weber
Last January I organized a concert during the Leidse Jazz Week in the Hooglandse Kerk in the Netherlands, a big church in the center of Leiden. I really wanted to perform with Florian Weber and since he is on tour…
I gave Jimmy Page a high five :)
And then I was graduating Berklee College of Music. Broken elbow or not, commencement was there. Over 900 graduates from all over the world. All music related majors being the best in what they do. I have been in Berklee…
Joe Lovano played my composition!
With my private instructor Joanne Brackeen I’ve been working on phrasing this semester. And, how do instrumentalists and vocalists speak their melodies. In earlier blogs I’ve mentioned that I like to approach music as a language, and if you can…
Sesame Street & Jazz
A couple of weeks ago I saw somebody post an amazing cute little movie on Facebook. It was Sesame street. But, that was not all; it was a jazz episode! I’ve been talking with a friend of mine that has…
Jazz Symposium
For this Amazing Symposium on jazz composition and the future of jazz Berklee invited a bunch of fantastic people: Geri Allen, Terence Blanchard, Billy Childs, Vijay Iyer, Tania Leon, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Shamie Royston, Patrice Rushen, Maria Schneider, Magan Stable and…
My first drum lesson from Adam Cruz
Visiting artist Adam Cruz (drummer of Danilo Perez, McCoy Tyner, Tom Harrell, Chick Corea and many more) told us that every musician has to play – at least a bit – of drums. He is right. So today he gave…