Hugo den Oudsten

I was born(which helps) in a small town in 1976. From an early age on I had an interest in music, which showed itself in the fact that I was shaking an old Strepsils-box on the beat of the music that was playing on the radio before I was grown up enough to be able to sit on my ass without help. This is ofcourse according to my parents, but they know about keeping a beat because when I showed them the Voodoo-album of D'Angelo some years ago they both started to move in a very cool and groovy freestyle way that made my eyes pop out of my head! Shortly after that I got a toy snaredrum and I remember I spent a lot of time with it, you know, kind of a "Blechtrommel" vibe. After that I got a kids-drumset on which I tried to play the hits of that era and soon after that I went to musicschool where I had to learn to play the recorder and read notes. I remember that I didn't really like it. Probably because now I had to do things that somebody else told me to do. After graduating from musicschool I tried to play flute but I just couldn't deal with people telling me what to study, so I quit within a couple of months. I also got more into playing sports and other stuff that kids like to do. It wasn't until I was 12 years old that I started becoming interested in music again. Because of growing-pains in my knees the doctor advised me to quit sports for a couple of months. To prevent me from cutting my wrists my parents decided to give me a keyboard. That was it! My love for music took over again. The most important thing in this was that I started listening to a lot of music. It was the moment in which I started developing my taste. Playingwise I just fooled around. Composing little songs on my keyboard, strumming on a spanish guitar, nothing high-profile or something. When I was 14 I heard a song that made me become interested in the electric bass. It was "Living in Another World" by Talk Talk. So I got a bass for my 15th birthday. I was hooked again.... In that same period I decided I wanted to become a musician. My musicteacher in highschool offered me private-lessons in which he would prepare me to get into conservatory. He was a great teacher(an still a great friend of mine today). He taught me theory, eartraining and some piano and made me conscious about the relation between the heart and the mind in music, which for me still is the most important issue when thinking about music. He also introduced me to jazz. The first jazzalbum I heard was "We Get Requests" by Oscar Peterson. Ray Brown's playing blew my mind! Anyway, after fooling around on different instruments I felt that I had to become a bassplayer. This was around when I was 17. I wanted to get into conservatory a year later so I spent the last year of highschool focusing on my bassguitar, theory and eartraining. After gettin my Atheneum diploma I got accepted on the conservatory and that's where I actually got my first bassguitar-lesson. In the third year I moved to Amsterdam and did my 1st phase exam in 2000. Then I got accepted to do 2nd phase and I finished that in 2002. Since then I'm a freelance bassplayer doing a lot of different things. Playing with (famous) jazzplayers, singer-songwriters, commercial bands, jambands. I also record and perform with R&B-singers, Bigbands, Worldmusic-projects. There are also quite some televisioncommercials in which you can hear my playing. I could drop some names but...