Charlie

I was born in 1962 in Heemskerk, The Netherlands. At an early age I discovered the beauty of classical music. It was my grandmother who sang in a choir and she took me to many concerts in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; from Tchaikovsky to Ravel, fabulous! When I was 12 my parents divorced and my father's second wife Hanna had a brother, Ed. He had a tremendous influence on my musical life. At his place I heard Earth, Wind & Fire, Isaac Hayes, but also Elis Regina and Caetano Veloso. After I met my wife, I spent some time in Malta, her home country. This is where I started playing percussion, as the drummer in the Paceville jazzclub (B.J.'s) handed me his cowbell. Back in Holland, after we got married (October 1984), I bought my first keyboard. After I made my first extra bucks at the European Options Exchange, where I worked as a floorbroker, I upgraded to a Yamaha PSR70. In 1986 I moved from my job in finance to Synton/Ensoniq to sell synthesizers, I had seen their stuff at some fair and it was love at first sight. This was a brief period, but in the mean time I owned an ESQ1 and a Mirage DSK1. I had already added a Yamaha TX7 to my set-up. In 1994 I exchanged all my gear for an Ensoniq TS10, nice...My present set-up contains: Yamaha MU80, Yamaha SY77, Yamaha CS6X, Roland JV880, Ensoniq TS10. My favourites are my CP conga's ! Influenced by my good friends Casper (DJ Cadiz) & Bert (Aural Bee) with whom I form the act Labdanz (www.myspace.com/labdanz), I make most of my music using Propellerheads' Reason and since end of 2007 I'm hooked on Ableton Live 7. I still find it hard to believe what is possible with these two, whow! I also played with the samba group Contrabanda (www.contrabanda.nl), where I played the cuica. These people taught me a real lot about rhythm, fantastic. After 2 years I stopped. I also had a radioprogram at the local Alkmaar radiostation, RTV Alkmaar. It was called 'Charlie on Sunday', here I played jazzy, funky, brazilian tunes from my own cd-collection. Apart from the occasional performance with Labdanz, I also play conga's with Jimmy Karakusevic, once in a while, at Cafe The Flight in Alkmaar. For the rest I'm a busy chap doing sales at Thomson Reuters.

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