Background:Myspace Backgrounds
Just to explain my love for traditional music: I was born in Ieper (Ypres) and still live there. From since I was a kid I've seen and heard Scottish bands playing the great warpipes on the market place and under the Menin Gate. So that has always sound familiar to me.In 1976 I went to Ireland (on a holiday) and learned to love Irish music hearing the Chieftains = first contact with Uillean pipes and Celtic harp. A couple of years later, as I wanted to hear more 'Celtic' music, I discouvered the music of Brittany (Alan Stivell).In 1984 I learned that there was something called traditional Flemish music, hearing 't Kliekske for the first time 'live'. They were playing some kind of bagpipes that I had seen somewhere in the paintings of Pieter Brueghel = first contact with Flemish bagpipes. They also played some strange instrument called the 'hurdy-gurdy'.Some years later my brother let me hear the sound of the French bagpipes ( Jean Blanchard, Eric Montbel, Philippe Prieur). In 2000 I went for the first time to the Dranouter Folk Festival. There I saw some my favorites in live performance. There was also a Belgian group called Trivelin. Listening to them I heard for the first time medieval and renaissance music on the bagpipes and the hurdy-gurdy. From that moment I was completely sold: I just had to learn to play those 2 instruments myself! So I started with hurdy-gurdy in 2001 (got my first lessons from Iep Fourier) and with the Flemish pipes in 2003 (first lessons from Pieter Blondelle). Now I'm still studying those instruments at the Volksmuziekschool in Ieper. My professors are Stefan Timmermans (bagpipe) and Paul Garriau (hurdy-gurdy).As for my love of classical music, I've listened to it all my live long. I can't count the times I came home from school and found my mother playing the piano (mostly Chopin). A traditional sunday afternoon began listening to the radioprogram called 'Belcanto'. The first LP's we had at home were from composers like Bach, Brahms, Bruckner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Gerschwin. When I was about 17, I learned more about Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak and others at school. I just loved all of it. And I still discover more and more composers and performers.Wereldkaart:
