I was born in 1952 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and was put on piano lessons from an early age, with the elderly teacher across the street where all other family members has lessons too. The talent people said I had never quite manifested... I did not like most of the music I was given, and did not like practising, preferring instead to roam the neighborhood with my friends, exploring the few barren places which still, even at that time, had not been rebuilt after the devastating bombing of World War II. When our elderly teacher suddenly died, I went to music school for a year or so but this was more of the same, and eventually I quit.

By that time I had discovered, and fallen passionately in love with, the music of Chopin and Liszt, and after that came many composers which I just had to play. For many years, I worked my merry way through vast stretches of repertoire, however still resisted any form of practising. This sorry situation continued for several decades. What eventually changed my ways, and made me take music seriously, was the discovery of Piano Society in 2005. This gave me the incentive to take lessons again (with Evelina Vorontsova and Folke Nauta) and and to work on repertoire best as I can. As there is so much I want to play and record, and time is  scarce, some compromise is inevitable though.

My unstinted admiration for Bach (only acquired during the last decade or so) led me to also take up playing organ, taking lessons fom Stephen Taylor and Gerrit Christiaan de Gier. Connected with that, because I have no organ at home yet need to practice, I am one of the organists of the Protestante Gemeente Nieuwegein-Noord (PGNN). I feel that playing organ is of great benefit to playing the piano - much more so than the other way around. Few things are so deeply thrilling and satisfying as blasting out one of these great Bach chorales In Organo Pleno.

Playing with other people is another thing I feel to be of enormous benefit to one's musical development. Accompanying a church service is a great experience, and I also play piano regularly together with other people, having a violinist partner, a cellist partner, and a piano partner. I would eventually like to accompany a good singer too and/or take part in a trio or quartet.

I studied mathematics and qualified as a maths teacher. However instead of making good on that, I stepped into software development, as many people did at the time, and stuck there. I now work as a senior technical support specialist for a large IT company, trying to sort out all these horrible problems that nobody else wants to deal with. In my spare time I like running and making music, and I serve as an administrator on Piano Society. I live in a tiny burg in the middle of the Netherlands with my wife, daughter (our son has moved out to study pathology), two dogs, and four stupid chickens. I can be reached on cbreemer@hotmail.com.

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