Since my first acquaintance with the marimba as a 10-year-old, it hasn’t been possible to imagine my life without it. In the many years after that, I have developed myself as a percussionist who specializes in marimba, chamber music and percussion education, including a bachelor and master's degree at the conservatory of Amsterdam.
As a member of the ensembles Lunatree and Mallet Collective Amsterdam, I integrate the marimba in contemporary music and as part of the artistic team of the Percussion Friends Foundation, I work hard to further develop and expand the world of percussion education. Besides being a performing artist, I am also a marimba, percussion and percussion didactics teacher at Codarts, the conservatory in Rotterdam, the Havo/vwo voor Muziek en Dans, the International School of Amsterdam and ‘het Leerorkest’.
I like to connect different styles and I love to develop programs that merge these musical worlds and complement each other into one strong entity. The marimba challenges me to draw my own plan, to find my path and to walk it with utmost conviction. The strong connections with African, South American and Asian music and the many opportunities in contemporary and old western music motivate me to constantly search for the immense possibilities that the marimba still has hidden.