Sharing

My aim is not just to help young people to discover the language behind those strange five lines with all their confusing symbols, but also to provide them with the tools to aid them in their search.
I like to help each musician reach his/her full potential, trigger the senses with regard to a feeling for style and develop a healthy, efficient technical foundation for what will hopefully prove to be a long and fruitful career.

Doing justice to what the music asks from us is an absolutely crucial issue. This involves looking at the score critically, studying and creating an idea of the sound we wish to achieve in certain passages, approaching the human voice as closely as possible, creating a range of orchestral colours on one’s instrument or a highly personal image and applying text and meaning to the music. At the base of it all is the technical foundation, the only true guarantee that enables us to speak and communicate our ‘language’ through our instrument.

I consider it a luxury to be able to share my expertise on a daily basis with those highly motivated young artists who come from all over the world to join our classes in Amsterdam. I do my utmost to be a trustworthy guide and to motivate and help them on their path as they enter this tough profession. The greatest reward for a teacher is the success of his student: every time an audition has been won or a prestigious concert has been given, it provides the assurance that what one teaches makes some sort of sense. The chemistry has been right.

Many of my viola students have been appointed to positions with leading European orchestras and ensembles, such as the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (assistant solo), Arnhem Philharmonic (solo), National Orchestra of Belgium (solo), Bonn Beethovenhalle, Graz Opera ( solo), Athens National Opera (solo), Athens Radio Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Residentie Orkest The Hague, Amsterdam Sinfonietta and many more.