About Me
There are things in my life you can call characteristic and that is the love for music / singing, to write poems and a great interest for history. And I consider myself fortunate that all of those things could come together in my job aswell as in my hobby: being lead singer and writer of lyrics at my medieval folkgroup Slag ende Stoot and passionate re-enactor too. So one way or another, I am more busy with "the past" than with the common life and it isn't strange that a lot of people have allready asked me if I am born in the wrong time ;-).
According to my parents I started to sing at the age of 1. And that is not so strange, because I come from a very musical family and also my mother was daily singing: while she was playing organ (she could / can play very good) , in the kitchen, etc.. And my father was playing accordion (you can see it on 2 Photographs below). My mother was teaching me a lot of songs and I got my first organ lessons from her. And also almost every day she was telling me stories and things from history which were really happened. Most of the time it were stories of knights, noble ladies, castles, the historical battles, the kings and queens, wars of Napoleon, the second worldwar, etc. And, oh, I loved that stories! There started my interest for history.
At the age of 4, I had my first stage performance with the orchestra of our neighbour; they were playing popular songs and jazz; and I was singing some popular songs.
This was also the age that I went to school for the first time. I visited the basic school, the sunday school and later the highschool; those schools had at least one thing common what was very important for me: and that was that they all had a school choir where I could do the thing I liked most: singing! And I was very glad that I got the opportunity to sing as a soloist at those choirs. So when I came from highschool, I had allready made a lot of experiences in performing at different stages.
Maybe strange, but after highschool I decided to study health- and medical science first. After this studies I had a job in the hospital as medical doctor's assistent for only a couple of years; but blood is thicker than water and so I decided that the time was there for a study singing.
So I went to the private school of a singing pedagogue, where I studied classical singing during 4 years. When I finished this study, I specialised during 1 year in singing medieval- and renaissance music: first at the same private school, later at two other pedagogues who were specialised in medieval- and old music. And because of the medieval languages I had to sing, I also studied old languages.During the called studies I met people who were members of historical associations and, because of my interests for history, I became a member of those associations too. I became and still am a passionated re-enactor, studying and performing especially the middle ages and renaissance.
There I met with some prof. musicians who had done the same kind of studies as I had done, with thát difference, that they studied instruments like: classic guitar, lute, saz, shawm, etc...
And with two of them, I raised the medieval folkgroup Slag ende Stoot. So Slag ende Stoot was born at 1998. And since that time I am the lead singer of that group.
We are most of the time performing at historical stages, although we are also performing at theaters and concerthalls. We have made music for movies, musicals and t.v. documentaries.But also in my spare time, I am re-enacting most of the time.
