I bought my first harmonica on a very cold but sunny afternoon on the 30th of January 1995 at Dol's music store in the Choorstraat in Delft.
 

It was a little over a month since my father had passed away and I didn't know what to do with myself.
After listening to the Funkadelic song "Music for My Mother" ten times in a row, I decided that maybe it would help if I played the harmonica.
So I went out and bought myself a Marine Band in the key of C and started playing.

After a week I bought the Harp Handbook by Steve Baker and found out about overblows. That's when any chance of living a normal live went out the window.
I spent the next couple of years practicing bends and overblows from when I got up in the morning until I fell asleep at night.

After about a year and a half (which included playing in a sort of blues band) I found my way to the jazz workshop of the university at which I was studying civil engineering. I was part of a free-funk band called Swab and slowly learned about jazz and what I wanted to learn.

After few years of learning to play jazz under the guidance of first Rolf Delfos and later Bart Wirtz (both alto sax players) I enrolled in a private school for jazz, the Djam in Amsterdam. I studied there for 2 years.

At the moment I am studying "jazz harmonica" at the Royal Conservatoire  in The Hague under the tutelage of Jarmo Hoogendijk .