52 weken / 52 weeks
To all weirdomusic fans,
Toos. That's my name since my birth; it's not a nickname or anything. (splogman: 'Toos' is pronounced like 'toas' in 'toast') That birth took place in the summer of 1978, which makes me 25 years old now. I was brought into this world in Hardenberg, a small place in the east of the Netherlands, where I spent my entire youth and adolescence. When I was 20 I moved to student's city Zwolle to continue my life independently. After several student(house)s now I live together with my love, Martijn, in the concrete-1980-getthos of Zwolle-South.
Musical biography
My love for music manifested itself early. As a little tot I knew all the songs of the Damrakkertjes' Christmas album by heart and I sung them during processions in the village. At home I accompanied myself on toy piano and mouth-organ and I wrote my own songs every now and then. Those were inspired by the popular dutch TV children choir "Kinderen voor kinderen".
When I was eight I swopped my toy grand piano for a real piano and I developed an undefinable kind of plinka plunk that sometimes sounded vagely like a children song. Many times that resulted in a song with my own lyrics. Piano lessons started in summer '88. I turned out, quite unexpectedly, to be a well disciplined student. However: that didn't result in becoming a virtuoso.
In spite of my long cherished desire to go to the music academy, I choose "sensibly" to follow a study to become schoolteacher, which I quit after a year to study social pedagogics. When I was finished I got a job in the business world, bought an second hand electric piano, wrote a few songs about my non-rewarding life, my never found great great love, my frustrations about to high expectations from this society, etc... and sang them with a friend.
That gave me piece of mind and I started to think about the music academy again.
I left my boss and after a lot of thinking over and searching I found a job at a big educational institution where I could teach some music among other things. They even let me direct a school musical and at the same time I started singing in a blues band.
I was so busy with doing well that I didn't have time to write and play my own music anymore. That only came back when I was burned out after one and a half year working as a teacher and when I met the right people like Jan who encouraged me to start composing, writing and performing again and to record a demo. At this moment I'm working part-time as a songwriter and singing teacher for a music-theater group and I have applied for the academy auditions.
My demo tells about the great journey. You can listen to a few songs here. I have translated most of them for you.
I hope you enjoy listening.
Toos ligtenberg
Splogman: Toos is performing life friday evening this week in Borra Theatre Café, Amersfoort
Mp3s hosted by archive.org / more download options
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