Ineke Vandoorn Transcipt
Ineke Vandoorn:
... well, criticism that will never end because you also... Well, it starts from the outside, but then you internalize it and you get this voice in your head, and I think everyone has to deal with that. But sometimes it's also very interesting and necessary to analyze within yourself, what kind of voice is that? Is that even my own voice, or is that something I picked up? You know what I mean?
I remember that I once asked a student that was really struggling with stuff, and I asked her, "Is this your voice or is it maybe someone else?" And then she could literally say, "Okay, this is my grandmother." And she said such and so, and blah, blah, blah. It can be so specific.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. Ineke Vandoorn is a wonderfully expressive prizewinning jazz vocalist, author, composer, and educator. Her book "Singing From The Inside Out" is available in English and Dutch.
During this episode, we are privileged to hear Ineke perform three times and also check out the timestamps for the many topics we covered.
The link for both podcast and video with the transcript is in the description, as well as my episode with Ineke's partner, guitarist Marc van Vugt.
Hi, Ineke Vandoorn. Thanks so much for joining me.
Ineke Vandoorn:
You're welcome.
Leah Roseman:
You have such a beautiful, personal and creative partnership with Marc van Vugt, who is a previous guest of this series, and I will tell listeners that his episode will be linked in the description in case they miss that. And I'm wondering, I know he encouraged you to start singing jazz very early on, and you guys discovered this music together. Could you speak about those early days of falling in love and discovering this music?
Ineke Vandoorn:
I first met Marc because I wanted to take some guitar lessons, so I was, I think 17. And so I took a couple of lessons. And then later on he told me that he wanted to start a band with his brother, and he asked me for the band as a pianist, because actually, he was the singer of the band. So that's how he started.
And he and his brother, they were investigating Brazilian music, so that's what we did. We did Brazilian standards. But Marc also wrote, his first compositions were always very much inspired by Brazilian rhythms, and he also started to try, I think he even wrote some Portuguese lyrics, I don't remember.
So I started to play the piano in the band. Then later on he decided, "Well, I'm not so sure if I should be singing, so I think you should be the singer of the band". And I had already been singing a lot when I was young in church choirs and stuff like that. And he really encouraged me to start to sing again because I didn't sing for a while.
So that's how we started. And the music that we were concentrating on in that band, it was called Baixim, that was Brazilian. I would call it Brazilian jazz rock. And that was quite new for me.
Leah Roseman:
And then when you were still a teenager, you had a problem with your voice and saw a speech language pathologist?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. I was singing at a church choir and it was lots of fun, but when I got older, I lost my voice very easily. So when we would have a carnival, you would go out with your friends and singing, my voice would just go away. And the first time it's fun, but if you have that more often, it's not really fun.
So I sort of decided that I couldn't sing, that I wasn't just talented enough to really sing. And when I took those guitar lessons with Marc, he said, "Well, you cannot play the guitar when you don't sing. You should sing." And then I said, "Well, I try to sing, but I cannot sing."
"No, no, but you really have to try. You have to sing when you play the guitar," and you all that kind of stuff. So then I started a bit and it went really well.
And then I wanted to go to the conservatory for classical piano, and I was accepted. And then you also have to sing in the choir, and you have to do, what is it called, Solfège, or sight reading. And I immediately got voice problems again. And then a teacher said, "well, you are always complaining about your voice, so why don't you do anything about it?" And I said, "Well, yeah, I would like to do that, but, what?" And he said, "Well, you have to go to a speech therapist," blah, blah, blah.
So then I did that and it was a lot of fun. All the time I was already singing in the band and I had no problem with that at all.
But yeah, so I started to take those speech therapy lessons and that went so quickly. I was like, oh, okay. It was all about breath in the beginning. And I thought, oh, now I know it, now I understand. So it was like my hobby. I was always practicing the piano, and then in between, I would take that cassette because we would record those speech lessons, and I would take that cassette and then play it off and practice every day. And yeah, I was just hooked.
Leah Roseman:
Well, do you want to talk about your book, "Singing from the Inside Out"?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Oh yeah, sure. It's maybe nice to make a little bridge. So I was still at a conservatory for classical piano, and then when my speech therapy lessons were finished, I thought, well, it might be good to have some voice lessons in school, like a minor. So I did that first for a year, and then they said, "Well, there might be some cutbacks and you cannot do those lessons." And then I thought, well, I might try to be a major for jazz and pop singing.
But it didn't exist at the time. They already had a just pop department, so they had guitarists and bass players and drummers. So I was the first who auditioned for it, and they accepted me. And I was the first singer at that time who was studying jazz and pop vocals. So at that time I did two studies. I had two majors at the same time, which was quite intense.
But everything was new. There were no books. I got some technique lessons from a classical trained teacher, and they would hire, how do you say that, people from the field to teach some lessons for interpretation.
So when I graduated for singing, pop jazz singing, and I was starting to teach, I had to figure out everything, how do you teach technique, interpretation, microphone technique, everything that's connected with the singing pop jazz.
So I did that for years. And at some point I also got a job at the conservatory. And I found out that many of the questions that amateur singers will ask are basically the same that professional students or students at a conservatory or professional education will ask.
But still, you couldn't find any answers to those questions. And at some point I decided to write some practical stuff down so that with certain questions, I would give a handout and say, "Well, read this and then we can talk about it later if you have some further questions." So that's where it started.
At some point I saw, okay, wow, this is quite a lot that I have now, so maybe let's see if I can really finish it and then make a book of it. And from when I started to finish, it took me, I think seven years. And what was good about it is that at some point you're writing certain stuff about, I don't know, maybe some technical stuff. And then in that week, maybe the same subject is coming up in a lesson and I would do certain stuff and think, oh, actually this approach might even be a little better than what I already wrote down. Or I would do something and think, oh, I didn't write that down, so I would make a little note.
So it was really, I wrote it down and I reviewed it and reviewed it and reviewed it. And then I had it read. So there were two people who read it for me. My colleague that I've been working together with for many years, Jolande Geven, and she also teaches both amateurs and at the conservatory, and also a former student that just graduated read it.
So I got other perspectives on what I wrote, and I adjusted again a little bit. And then it was published first in Dutch, and then, I don't know, seven years later, again, seven years, it's always seven years, it was translated and then it was published in English.
Leah Roseman:
And it's used quite a bit worldwide in different programs.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yes. I have been invited to vocal and voice congresses, and I've done lectures there and masterclasses, et cetera. And yeah, there's a lot of interest in the book because it's so practical. And it's really thick. It's like someone in the Netherlands called it the Lonely Planet Guide for Singers, because you can just look things up. How to practice, what to practice, things about being on stage, things about singing technique, things about performance skills.
Yeah, it's a very vast subject. It's a very vast range of subjects. That's what I want to say. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
The style between jazz pop and jazz, and I would say musical theater, so different from classical, well, a little bit different, the use of vibrato and phrasing, do you address all the different styles?
Ineke Vandoorn:
When the book was first published in Dutch, it was called "Professional Singing for Everyone". And that was professional in the sense of that you can practice it, that you can really go in depth, that it's not like, okay, you can sing or you cannot sing depending on how you were born. Now you can develop it.
When the Dutch book was published, of course, I got feedback from people, and the feedback was about many things that were completely normal for me, but that I never realized.
So then I thought, okay, so maybe I have a very specific view on the voice and on development and on being a singer that hasn't been described, that many people never thought about, but that they find very appealing. And that's why I changed the title into "Singing from the Inside Out". And then there's a subtitle, "Exploring the Voice, the Singer, and the Song".
The idea of singing from the inside out has to do with the fact that when I'm working with a singer, there is of course a pop jazz tradition, but you can do anything with that. You can decide to be a very traditional jazz singer, but you can also decide to make a new combination of jazz and pop to find your own style, et cetera, et cetera.
So it's very different in that sense from classical singing and even from musical theater singing, because then, before you start, you already sort of know in what kind of tradition you are going.
For classical singers, it is very important to know, within a certain timeframe, to know what kind of voice and what kind of character the voice has, because there is a whole lot, there is a complete repertoire. Whereas in case I would, for example, teach a 16-year-old boy with not a really big voice, but this boy wants to sing hard rock, it's not the first thing that I would say, "Hey, let's start there." But you can still sing it because you can just modify it into something that fits the person. So that's why I said, well, you work from the voice that has to be developed, of course. The singer, what kind of person is this, what kind of character? And the song, what kind of repertoire does this person want to sing? So that thing, that combination, that's the core.
And you have to explore it because I don't know when this person enters, you have to explore together where this path is leading to. So it's from the inside out, you don't know really where you will end up. I think that's the core difference. That affects the way you are working. The whole methodology is completely different.
So I'm going to play Holysloot. It's a piece that I wrote myself. And Holysloot is a tiny little village, very close to Amsterdam. I once went there because someone I knew was performing there in a very old church. And it was such a beautiful, beautiful special place that I wrote a song about this inspired by the ideas that I got while sitting in the church.
(singing)
Leah Roseman:
Hi. Just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce the series, and there are a lot of costs I bear as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip or becoming a monthly supporter, starting at $3 Canadian, which is close to $2 US or two euros, and getting access to unique perks. The link is in the description. Now, back to the episode.
When you offer your workshops, what kind of topics do you cover, or how do you run those?
Ineke Vandoorn:
It depends what people are inviting me for. Well, the topics that I really like to do is improvisation, free improv or improv based on chord changes. Sometimes I combine that with movement as well, so we do it in a big room. So that's one thing. When I do a masterclass, people will sing for me and I will just give feedback.
One of the things I also is topics on breathing. And sometimes people will ask me for when it's a short thing on just vocal technique, things like that. Yeah, so I'm a little bit... But I like to teach improvisation. I think that's the thing I like most.
Leah Roseman:
You're such an expressive singer. You have so much guts and nuance and such a beautiful voice. I've listened so much to your recordings, but one of the things that I found the most impressive was your theater piece with the Finnish, oh, what's her name? Oh, Cecilia Moisio.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So do you want to speak to that project and describe it for people?
Ineke Vandoorn:
A friend who was a director was working with her often, and she is a dancer and a choreographer. And her style is very, of course, very physical, but also quite extreme sometimes. And she also likes to use the voice. So her dancers, they sing, they scream, they talk, they do all sorts of stuff.
And this director that worked with her and that I also knew, one day, told her, "You should ask Ineke to do some work with your dancers because they need some support with what they are doing."
So that's how I got to know her. And I found it very interesting to work with those dancers. And I like her work a lot. It was very extreme, really extreme physically, and demanding. But we got along really well. And at some point she was planning on a new piece in which she was working with women from different ages, and she asked me if I wanted to take part in that project. And I was doubting because basically, you have to be sort of available for a month, and it's a lot of rehearsing. I wasn't sure if that's really my thing because every little detail, you know?
In the end I said to her, "No, sorry, I would love to do something with you. So my answer is no to this, but would you like to make a piece with me, just a duet?"
And she wasn't performing a lot at that time anymore, but she said, "Well, yeah, I want to do it." And so we decided to make a piece on criticism. When you start to sing or to dance, you're in this thing that you just like it and it's something of your own. Then you get lessons and you have the outside view of your teachers or your parents or your pals in school. And then later you get the critics that are writing.
So there is this tension between this inner self and the outer world and how to deal with that. So we did a lot of research in our own life, what did we go through? And I researched also other stuff that I found that other people were writing about it, and we made it into a piece where I was singing and talking and moving, and she was also dancing, singing, and talking. But of course she did the real dance pieces and I did the real singing. And there was also video in it, music. And yeah, it was really interesting. I loved making that. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
The 12 minutes you've posted on your website that I watched, I mean, you're very physical, you're pushing her. It's very aggressive, pushing her down.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Well, that's very much her way of working, she's very physical. And in a way, I also like that. It's very technical. Of course, we practice that. And there's actually a very-
There's actually a very magical touch to the whole thing, that exactly 10 years before we had our premiere, we first made a short piece, like half an hour. When that premiered, it was premiered in a very special round tower that's part of a museum in Maastricht. 10 years before, I was in that museum and I entered that space and it was like I was mesmerized by the space and the sound. And I started to dream about making a piece there where I was singing and making use of the acoustics and walking around, and I got very detailed ideas about that, what to do and how that would sound and what kind of ...
Well, so I realized that if I would like to ... anything to that, that I should at least start to do something with movement myself, and I'd never taken any dance classes or whatever. So, I figured out what I would like to do, and because I didn't want to go to jazz dance where you have to do all the ... You know? And I found these courses, these groups that are doing a dance improvisation, and it's very open, but you also become very physical.
And I will never forget the first lesson that you're lying on the ground and moving and crawling. And I was like, "Man, I haven't been on the ground crawling, I don't know, so many years." So I did it for many years. And then when I met her, so it was not the first time that I started to move and to do physical things. And then at some point I said, "Well, maybe we can try and see if we can premiere at that festival." And that festival was in Maastricht, and then I said, "Well, then, I want to do it there in that space," and it all happened. So, 10 years after I started to think and dream about it, we had the premiere over there.
Leah Roseman:
And you were finalists in one of the world's largest choreography competitions?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Well, there was a new competition about duets. We applied for it, and it was, yeah, because they had like 100,000 euro, that was the prize, so you could make a new piece, et cetera, et cetera. And so, we applied for that, and then they chose from, I don't know how many, from all over the world, they chose also us, so we were finalists. I think we were one of six. But then something sad happened, well, for the piece, not for Cecilia. She got pregnant.
Leah Roseman:
Oh.
Ineke Vandoorn:
And she decided to quit immediately with moving and dancing, so that was like ... and then it was over.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, so it was not really, in that sense, it was not really a happy end. But we performed the piece, but yeah, there were still ways to go. We could have, I think, we could have gone ... We did performances in the Netherlands, but we were just taking off, but yeah, but that's what happens with the dancers. At certain points, you know, cannot push it off any longer.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. It's interesting. I was just thinking, my previous guest of this series, Diane Nalini, is a wonderful jazz singer, and she spoke about her early days being a ballet dancer and the criticism and how horrible it was and how she quit dance. It's a hard road, I think.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, criticism, that will never end, because you also ... Well, it starts from the outside, but then you internalize it and you get this voice in your head, and I think everyone has to deal with that. But it sometimes it's also very interesting and necessary to analyze within yourself, what kind of voice is that? Is that even my own voice, or is that something I picked up? You know what I mean?
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Ineke Vandoorn:
I remember that I once asked a student that was really struggling with stuff, and I asked her, "Is this your voice or is it maybe someone else?" And then she could literally say, "Okay, this is my grandma, grandmother, and she said 'such and so,' and 'blah, blah, blah.'" It can be so specific.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. The song Fear is just one note. Did you write it for that production? Or just-
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Yeah. I wrote it for that production. The whole thing of performance anxiety was very much in the news for a while. There is this news program that had an item on that, and so I performed it with Marc live there in the studio.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. Very, very powerful.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Dutch television. Yeah, it's a lovely ... Yeah, I like it too.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I'm curious, when you were young and you started performing and you went to big jazz festivals, maybe for bigger crowds performing in your second language ... I don't know if English is your second language or your third. You study so many languages in the Netherlands. Did you have experiences of performance anxiety that were a new feeling in those settings?
Ineke Vandoorn:
I've quite some experience with performance anxiety, but it's all connected with the classical piano.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. And when I've been singing, of course, sometimes I'm nervous, but yeah, I'm nervous, and sometimes it's bad and sometimes it's less, but I wouldn't call it really like "Whoo." But with the piano, yeah, I would completely freeze, really completely freeze, and had blackouts.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, so that has been a journey to be able to really perform. Because I did those two things, singing, classical piano at the same time, when I finished my piano studies, I was already teaching also at a music school for piano. I did that for a couple of years, but I never really pursued a performance career as a classical pianist, because I was already ... Things were going so well with the singing and the bands, and it was so natural to me to go that path.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And did you feel that having an improvisatory element to the performance helped you because it didn't have to be exact?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yes. I started to play the piano when I was young, and I was doing that with private lessons, so I was never in a music school. I never played together with others, so I was completely in my own bubble and I had this piano teacher that was helping me. So, I went from that situation to the conservatory, and then you move to the big city, and there's this piano department, and there are, I don't know, numerous classical pianists. So, it's like a big wake-up, like, "Huh? Oh, my. They're all so good." That whole change, I was still in, really, literally in my bubble. And then every piece you're playing is already recorded a thousand times, and everyone can tell you how it should sound. I can remember even at some point, I was playing in front of another teacher and then I was playing a Bach piece, and then he said, "I actually like it a lot the way you play this, but you know, you cannot do this, it's Bach. You're not supposed to play it like that."
And what I loved with the whole singing thing, I love Ella Fitzgerald. Well, there's so many singers that I like, but no one ever told me, "Hey, you cannot do that because such and so is doing blah, blah, blah." And that works for me. I have quite a high standard for what I want, and I'm very critical on what I want to do and the way it should sound. But yeah, I'm not really interested in doing something that has already been done by someone else who did it really good.
Leah Roseman:
And you mostly sing original songs that you've written with Marc, most of your repertoire?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Yeah. That's the way I started. We started to work together when I was 17 or 18, and we never stopped working together. And of course, in school I started to do other ... I sang French chansons and jazz standards and some musical theater stuff, and yeah, it's nice, and I like it. And well, we, Marc and I, there was a whole period that we also performed standards. We still mix it sometimes with some standards also. I think when you also perform a few standards, it can help also the audience to relate to what you're doing. Yeah, I've mostly performed original material. Yeah.
I will continue with the song Tea. It's written by Marc quite a while ago, and I wrote lyrics about the situation that someone is waiting for their partner to come home, and all the thoughts you have while waiting. Tea.
(singing)
Leah Roseman:
That was so great. And I've heard you perform that, of course, with Marc, but it was cool to hear that version.
Ineke Vandoorn:
I have never done it. I've never sung it while playing piano, so this is the first one.
Leah Roseman:
Beautiful. And that was an effect pedal used for the pitch?
Ineke Vandoorn:
I have used quite a lot of different pedals, but I'm using now the DigiTech 400 Vocal. It's a very simple thing, and that's why I like it because I can adjust it very easily and quickly, and it's sturdy. You can take it with you all over the world and it will never break down. I'm just using a few effects because the fun with the singing is if I use this thing, for example, the last one that I did (singing), there's a second voice or there's speech shifting, but you have also the delay. But I can do different things with that (singing), so when I'm improvising and I'm not on my own, sometimes if I don't do a pitch, then you won't hear a pitch, so I can do this effect ... so you don't hear two tones, and that's so nice. With the vocal effects, I can do already so much with my voice that just with one effect, you can do multiple things, so I don't need a lot of stuff. That's what I like.
Leah Roseman:
That's so fantastic. Thanks for sharing this today. I spoke with Marc a little bit about your time in Paris, staying at the Van Doesburg House. I'm curious what your experiences were like. Did you get to collaborate with different people being immersed in French culture? What was that like for you?
Ineke Vandoorn:
In principle, the idea was that we could have the house for 10 months. And so when we got there, we were like, "Okay, what are we going to do? We will use it as a house where we can work and be quiet and concentrated," because there's no distraction there. And of course, we went out to explore Paris and all the clubs that they have and the music. But we specifically said, "Okay, we're not going to try and play there," because then we have to be on the phone, really do some acquisition. And that's the thing that we were already all the time doing, so we thought, "Let's not do that because then we will have the same life that we had had at home." Let's just go get away from there.
We met some musicians and we played with them just for fun. And then when we could stay for another year, then we also investigated, okay, we released a CD also in France, did some PR, and we did some performances and et cetera, et cetera.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. It's interesting you mentioned about being on the phone, basically hustling for gigs, right? Because you're your own managers?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And you have basically your own record label as well?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Well, at some point we ... Well, we have been working with other managers as well, but in the Netherlands, it's really a problem, that I think 99% of the jazz musicians are doing it themselves because it's not commercial enough to really, you know what I mean, to really be able to hire someone for it. And you need a lot of stamina. You really have to push and to be able not to give up. And it's hard for other people to do that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Ineke Vandoorn:
It's just hard.
Leah Roseman:
They don't care as much. It's just a job for them.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Yeah, and they come in with the idea, "Oh, wow, I love them and I love their music, and let's do it." And then they find out how hard it is, and even though they got paid, they get paid, it's like, "Whoa," you know?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And do you have advice about entrepreneurial skills in your book?
Ineke Vandoorn:
No, not about that.
Leah Roseman:
Is it something you speak about with your students at the university?
Ineke Vandoorn:
I'm coaching a lot of master students. Where I work, ArtEZ, Arnhem, we have a Master where students are following basically their own individual path, and part of it is that they have to organize a lecture workshop program. So, they have to invite guest teachers between eight or 10 times in a year. And they have to think about, who are the people that we would like to invite and why, and where are they? And I'm coaching that program, so they have to learn to think about it and also to learn about organizing, how do you organize stuff and how do you negotiate with someone? Because they also have to do the whole money thing, so it's about organizational skills.
And then after that, that program ... I do that in the beginning, so at some point the organization stuff is done. And then I'm also doing study groups with them where they are talking and doing stuff, and I'm also always there, and I'm sharing. And whenever I think, "Hey, well, maybe this is nice to share my experience with it," I will do that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Do you think it's important for all singers to have a harmonic instrument to work with, piano or guitar?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Because there are all sort ... In what I do within the pop and the jazz world, there are, of course, great singers that don't have any skills in writing music or reading music or ... You know what I mean? They might be able to function completely great without being able to play an instrument. But when I turn it around, when I think about a conservatory education, then I think, "Well, you have to be able to accompany yourself, to accompany students. You have to be able to transpose to write scores, all that thing."
And whenever I am invited for a lecture on methodology, I always say, "Okay, I divide those skills for a singer into two things. You have to develop the individuality of a singer, the creativity. What is this singer about? Who is this person, and how can this person express himself in the best way, and use the voice for that? And you have the professional skills. A singer has to be able to maintain, to know how to keep the voice in shape, and to communicate with other instrumentalists, be able to talk about harmony. And when you want to improvise, you have to know all those things about scales, harmony, how to practice." That's a whole pile of things too. And so you have the professionalism and the individuality.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I know you've explored free improvisation, free of harmonic structure and all that, and with your voice really using all kinds of sounds that aren't traditional singing. Do you work on that with students, or have you taught courses with that?
Ineke Vandoorn:
I usually do that in group lessons. For example, I always teach six lessons a year with a vocal ensemble with the first year students, and I do at least three of those lessons, sometimes more, with free improv where we are going to move and use different sounds. Sometimes I teach an elective and we do free improv. Sometimes I do it one-on-one, just in the private singing lesson. But it depends on ... Again, at ArtEZ, there is not a fixed curriculum. There is a certain standard of professional skills and a certain basic standard of being able to sing different styles. But the further they get in their four-year Bachelor, the more they focus on their own style, so some are not really improvising a lot, and others do a lot, so it depends on the student.
Leah Roseman:
It strikes me that there's a lot of support in the Netherlands for arts and creatives. Do you feel that as a Dutch person?
Ineke Vandoorn:
In which way? What is support for you?
Leah Roseman:
Well, grants that are available at different levels of government.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Yes and no. Yeah. It depends on which country. It's definitely better than, I think, United States, but I think, for example, in Canada, all those people there are getting so many grants to do CD recordings, which is much harder here. Yeah, there is support, but we have had now a more right wing government for, I don't know, 12 years. And basically, I don't know exactly the figures, but I think around 90% of the music schools, they were always traditionally funded by the government. They're all gone. All the music schools are now private.
Leah Roseman:
That's sad to hear.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. The music education there is really not good. Well, of course, it's still there, but it used to be much easier for people who don't have that much money to just have their children on the music school. It's getting harder and harder and teachers are not so good paid, and the whole situation is ... Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. I wanted to ask you if you had perfect pitch.
Ineke Vandoorn:
No, I don't have perfect pitch, but I would say that I have good relative pitch, good memory. It's going up and down, but in the beginning of my career, I had this vocal trio.
Leah Roseman:
I was just going to ask.
Ineke Vandoorn:
I did it with my brother, who was also a great singer, and then with another singer that was also at a Utrecht Conservatory where we studied with the three of us. We started this trio called Voice Lab. Then we were doing all weird stuff with our voices and making a nice arrangement. I remember that at some point that we would start to improvise and then of course, the theme comes back, but sometimes you drop a little while you're doing a acapella stuff because there's no piano there, and then I would automatically go back to the original key for the theme, because it's just there. I could also always, when I just think of a tuning fork, I would hear like, (singing). I'm not sure I'm still doing it, I'm off now, but at that time, I could just think of an A and it would be there. So no perfect pitch, and I'm happy about that because it's hard. It's better not to have perfect pitches when you are a singer.
Leah Roseman:
I think for a lot of instrumentalists as well, because people are very disturbed if the pitch is tuned differently.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
But I was curious specifically about singing a acapella. And you guys had a regular radio appearance.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. At that time, we were picked up. We were taking part in a close harmony contest. We had basically, because we were experimenting so much, we only developed three songs in a full year just because we're ... We took part with two songs and there was a lot of radio television people. We didn't win, but they find us so attractive that we got lots of radio and television gigs. One of the radio programs asked us to sing a weather report every Friday live at the radio. So we would come together on Friday morning, 9:00, and one of the three of us would write a little idea, musical idea. Then we would phone them to ask, "Hey, what's this program about?" And we would write lyrics and then rehearse and then at 11:00, get in the car, go to the studio, do sound check, and then sing it live in the show. We did that for, I think, 30 times a whole year.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I thought that was so funny when I read that. And in the Netherlands, I mean, your weather's often the same every week.
Ineke Vandoorn:
That's why we combined it later with not only the weather, but also some hints to some of the subjects of the show.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. That's a long time ago.
Leah Roseman:
Is your brother still singing?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And you sang together growing up in the home?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, we would do that and we were together in the church choir, all our friends would be there, and he has also been in that Brazilian band for years. So in that band, at some point, we had two singers, so me and my brother and-
Leah Roseman:
And Marc and his brother, so like a real family.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. At that time, yeah. But of course, there has been changed because Marc's brother went to do something differently. He didn't went into music.
Leah Roseman:
Were your parents supportive of you going into jazz after the classical training?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. They both were singing a lot. They were both amateur singers. They sang in a chamber choir and my father was also being asked as a soloist for when you have those masses where they have a choir and then a tenor bass in it with the four voices, he would do a solo part. And he also was in a close harmony group for a while, performing with a radio orchestra, but it's very long time ago. Yeah, it was okay.
Leah Roseman:
I spoke with Marc in our conversation about your experiences in Banff, and I'd read that you didn't think of yourself as a singer when you had first gone there.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, definitely. So when we went to Banff, I had read that Cassandra Wilson would be there and I was very much interested in her because she did interesting stuff with electronics and with Steve Coleman and improv. And then when we came there, it happened to be she wasn't there, first of all, they changed teachers, and it was very much concentrated on much more on singing and playing jazz standards than I expected. I thought it was all very modern, so I was a little bit like, "Whoa, okay," but the teachers were all wonderful. And we also, in our free time, we would then do our own stuff and people would bring their own compositions.
And one of the teachers there was Don Thompson, the Canadian bass player and pianist, and I got to know him and he was so kind. He's such a sweet man and he had this beautiful piece, well, a piece that I liked a lot, and I asked him, "Can I write lyrics to that song?" "Yeah. Yes, please do so." And then he liked my lyrics. He said, "Well, let's record them," because that's great in Banff when you're there, we also got a possibility to make some recordings. I performed it with him and a bass player, I think, and he gave me lots of compliments. He was like, "Wow, it's so good," but I was listening back and I said, "But I hear this and I hear that," and he looked at me and he was like, "Don't you hear that it's really good?" so he was a little bit annoyed. Well, not annoyed, because he's so sweet, but he was like, "What is this?"
So at some point he said, "Well, we have to talk." He actually did a big thing for me. We sat down and he said, "You really have to start taking yourself more seriously as a singer." At that point, only then I realized I'm a singer. I always considered myself, "Oh, I'm a pianist and I like to sing," because to me, singing was so something so big and so beautiful and something, I don't know, not for me. My idea was, "Well, you're sitting next to God when you're a singer. It's too big." You know what I mean? And then he said that to me, "You have to take yourself much more seriously. It's great what you're doing. Man." And it was a big click for me, a big click. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yes. I wanted to ask about mentorship, because he was obviously such a mentor to you in encouraging you. Have you, in terms of being a woman in the jazz world, which is still very male dominated except for singers, maybe, have you been a mentor to younger women in a similar way, encourage them?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Well, in my work as a teacher, definitely a part of what you do is of course, mentoring like, "Okay. How do you behave in a band?" And when stuff happens, we talk about it and I will definitely help them out. And if it's necessary, if it's really necessary, step in, maybe discuss it in school if it's necessary, but yeah, I will definitely talk about these kind of things. And recently I had a Master student who's a singer-songwriter, and we had really talks about being a woman in the business. Sometimes you talk about being together with a musician, for example, or sometimes students will ask me about having children and all that. Yeah, I'm open to that because I realize with how many people can you have this conversation.
Leah Roseman:
And as a lyricist, you started writing in Dutch, I presume, but then switched to English pretty early?
Ineke Vandoorn:
No, I started in English. Marc was writing his stuff and he was also writing the lyrics. At some point he said, "Well, you are singing those lyrics, so here you go. It's your turn. You have to write the lyrics." And I just started, and it was not easy, so it was really a learning curve that I had to do because my English was also not so strong, so I had to find ways to get that better, to develop myself.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I think you're such a beautiful poet and lyricist.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Oh, thank you.
Leah Roseman:
And I'm curious, is there less translation happening now that you've been doing it so long, that you can think directly in English when you write?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yes, and I also do a lot of research. Of course, you have people who write lyrics and then someone else writes music to it or they write music themselves to it, but I write lyrics to songs that already have been written. So it's not that I am somewhere and think, "Oh, I'm so inspired." No, it's a craft. I see it as a craft. On the other hand, I love poetry and I definitely want to sing about something. In the beginning, I found that I used very vague and poetic words but I wasn't really clear what I wanted to say. Maybe I didn't even know what I wanted to say. So at some point, I was like, "Okay, next time ..." I really challenged myself. "What is what you want to say? Well, say it. Try to find those words." But then those words, you have to find words that fit on the melody and also fit on the note because when you go up, certain sound, certain vowels, certain words sound much better than other. And actually, it makes it more difficult, but once they're there, it's nice because then the combination of the melody and what you want to sing, I try to find a good match. Do you know what I mean?
Leah Roseman:
Does Marc, as your creative partner, does he let you have completely free reign or has he sometimes been not happy with the topic or the mood you chose for the melody that he wrote?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yes. Yeah. He will sometimes say things about it, sometimes about certain words. Sometimes I will adjust the rhythm a little bit or even a melody a little bit and then sometimes he doesn't agree, so he gives me something, I start to work. And then of course, then we have to look at it and listen to it again and figure it out. Yeah, it's not really often that it's hard between us to find the right one. That doesn't happen a lot. Sometimes it happens, that it's like, "Ooh. Version one, version two, version three," but most of the time ... Yeah.
And sometimes, couple of years ago, we went to France. We rented a house, or especially to write new material and he gave me a beautiful song, a little bit fado-like, and he specifically said, "I want you to write beautiful lyrics in Dutch." I had done it before around 2000, I think, because we did those tours in Canada, and people asked me, "Are you never singing in Dutch?" They found it so weird that I was singing in English. And so the first thing I did was translating my English lyrics, translating them to Dutch, and I recorded a few of them, that's on the trio record with Paul van Kemenade. I wrote Dutch lyrics to one of his songs, I'm not sure, three or four songs I did in Dutch. So then again, so then, I don't know, 2017, whatever, '18, I'm not sure, we were in France and Marc said, "Okay. I would like you to write Dutch lyrics to this."
What is interesting about it is that you have to find your voice in that language. In the Netherlands, there aren't singers like me, jazz inspired singers, that sing in Dutch. I remember back in 2000, when I first started to sing the songs for Marc and in Dutch, we both had to laugh, because the only connection you have with Dutch lyrics is pop music or how do you call those, people singing about life, those very well, not jazz, theatrical pieces, but just by doing it and doing it and doing it and changing and trying it out, you find your voice in that language. I had to do that again, then, in 2017, because it was really a while since I wrote in Dutch, and that particular set of Dutch lyrics took me a full week. So I sat down at 9:00, worked till 4, did that for five days. That was so extreme. I was completely desperate because you cannot sing in Dutch if you don't really feel and mean what you're saying. It's impossible to sing those words.
Leah Roseman:
It must be so important for younger Dutch singers coming up to hear you sing some songs in Dutch, to affirm their identity.
Ineke Vandoorn:
What kind of Dutch young singers? Jazz singers, you mean?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, or really, anybody, I mean, I would think. You're a small country in Europe.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, but there are not so many singers that are interested in jazz that would sing in Dutch.
Leah Roseman:
But there could be one. You could impact that one person.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Sure, of course. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Marc had said when you guys were teenagers and you were on your bikes going to the neighboring village to hear the local jazz musicians and they were like your mirrors, the way he put it, which I loved that image. We were talking about how now people have YouTube, they have the whole world to compare themselves to, but that's what I mean. So for someone who doesn't feel comfortable in other languages and they want to write lyrics in Dutch in whatever genre and they happen to hear your song on the radio, and they're like, "Oh, this is possible. I can do this." That's what I mean.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Well, in the Netherlands, there are many pop singers and musical theater and they are singing in Dutch, definitely. But the radio is very ... Well, there are of course, radio channels that have lots of Dutch music, but it's very much oriented on English language music and there's hardly any jazz anymore on the radio. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I grew up loving jazz. We had a few records, but it was mostly the radio. There was a show I used to listen to before bed that was on our National Radio Canada, the French, and I just used to listen to that all the time.
Ineke Vandoorn:
I must say in what I found out in Banff, that when I was studying, of course, I did some jazz standards, but the way jazz standards were treated in the Netherlands were almost like what they do with classical music. "It has to be like this, it has to be like that," so I wasn't particularly interested in jazz standards when I was studying. Then I went to Banff, and then I, for the first time, realized what a tradition is, where it comes from, and I saw that it's really part of all the musicians that I met there from the USA and from Canada, that's just part of their everyday life. Still, when you go to a mall or to a restaurant, in many cases, you will hear jazz music. For me, that was such an eyeopener. It's much more alive, much more really rooted in everyday life than here in the Netherlands.
Leah Roseman:
And Ineke, as you developed as a singer, what did you discover about yourself as a person through singing?
Ineke Vandoorn:
The way we started, Marc and his brother, they were already listening a lot to Brazilian music, and he gave me this records of Flora Purim and Airto Moreira, and she's doing all the free stuff with her voice and all the colors. In the beginning it was so new for me, it was hard to relate to it, but since all the others that I know were so inspired by her, I just listened to it over and over and over again, just really, what do they hear? Why is this so interesting? And I very much started to like her, especially because she sings lyrics, which I also really love. I really love lyrics and poetry. But when it's over, it's not that she waits in the corner till the instrumentalist are ready with whatever they're doing and then she's allowed to sing the words again, so she would do, in the background, sounds and with reverb and all that and I loved the way she was doing that, this whole thing.
I started to do that quite early on, so I was quite free with my voice, but on the other hand, when I was on stage, I was really afraid. I wouldn't say a word. Marc would do all the announcements. I would just say not one word. I wouldn't know what to say. There is this nice tension between those two and I think by going further and further and further, I opened up much more emotionally, my expression and all that, because I think I've always been an expressive person, I think, also when I was young, but then to really connect it with your instrument and then being able to be one with your instrument, that's a whole development and it's what I did in the singing, I think.
Leah Roseman:
We had talked a little bit about your work with theater and dance and you also did this improvised opera, "Alice in Space". Is that right?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. Basically, that was a piece written by Marc and we worked together with Ingmar Heytze, who is a poet, he lives in Utrecht, and he's a very musical person. He plays guitar and he really is able to think as a musician. We worked as a trio. He came up with a book that he was inspired by, and based on that book, he wrote a story about Alice in Space. He wrote all the texts, et cetera, and then Marc wrote music and I wrote the song lyrics. So there were songs, improvisation, and there were images, so we worked together with a video artist. And then on stage there were lots of musicians, and I would sing and play the piano, but I was playing the role, I was Alice, and then we had Ingmar on stage as, he would tell the story, like ...
Leah Roseman:
Narrator?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, the narrator. Exactly. The narrator, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Alice as an Alice in Wonderland Alice?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. It's a little bit like that. It's about someone who wins a prize and then goes to a, it's almost close to The Little Prince. So she's then on a certain planet and then she tries to get back and then she's over there and all the time she's not able to get back to the place where she started, something like that. Yeah. I have to think because it's such a long time ago.
Leah Roseman:
No, I was just curious because it said improvised opera, so it was just partially improvised.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Yeah. Now you are in for special treat as the third vocal performance Ineke gave when we recorded this episode, she did an amazing free improvised solo. After the improv, the conversation continues.
Ineke Vandoorn:
I could also do just a solo improv. I could do that, too.
Leah Roseman:
I was going to ask you.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Oh, I'm.
Leah Roseman:
.... I was going to ask you.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, I could try, just for now. (Singing)
A little bit of an unsuspected ending, but, unexpected. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I loved it. Thank you so much.
Ineke Vandoorn:
You're welcome.
Leah Roseman:
And I wanted to ask about your newer collaboration with the recorder player, Saskia...
Ineke Vandoorn:
Saskia Coolen. Yeah. I know Saskia because she's also, she lives in Utrecht and we have invited her for some projects that we'd done, where we are collaborating with all sorts of people, doing duos and trios on the spot. So one of those projects she was part of, and last year I turned 60 and I wanted to do some special projects and I thought, "Well, she is definitely someone that I would like to work with." So we just started to rehearse and see what you can do. She's very, very well-known baroque specialist. She teaches in United States every year, and she goes there also for masterclasses, et cetera.
But she also recorded an album with her improvisations. And at some point she had a modern group with recorder players with modern composed music. And we started to improvise and to work with sound. And the other thing that we did was played some of her improvisations because after she recorded it, she also wrote her improvisation, she wrote them so then we could try to perform them together. So we developed a small repertoire for that and we did a couple of performances and it's still in, how would you say, this is still in development stage.
Leah Roseman:
It's so interesting. I ran across three different well-known recorder players who also are playing jazz and different types of improvised music.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Well, what I like about it, well, of course I like her as a person, as what kind of musician she is. But what I found out and what I maybe didn't really realize before I started, she has so many different instruments, and so it's very much like a voice, different registers, et cetera. And then she can make all these different sounds because she also sings in her recorder. And then she can sing different stuff than that she's playing. So then we can do three part harmonies and it's so interesting. Lots of fun.
Leah Roseman:
It's wonderful for your milestone birthday that you wanted to do different creative projects as a celebration.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Did it have a special meaning for you to turn 60, coming out of this pandemic where you weren't able to perform?
Ineke Vandoorn:
For me, turning 60 was, "Okay, then you are definitely, I don't know, you're definitely old." When you're 60, for me, it's like everyone can know that I'm 60. Before, it was like, "Oh, I don't want to talk about my age," and all that. But I have really this feeling I'm done with a lot of stuff. I really feel if I'm really upset about something, okay, I will let people know. I'm something like, I've done so many things, I don't have to prove myself anymore. I don't have to, whatever. I don't have to do anything. I can just do anything.
And I also read, I don't know how much we form, I read about kanreki, which is 60, turning 60 in Japan. And they say, you are being born again when you're 60. You have run through the start of the zodiac. I think it's 12 of course, and they have done that five times. So you start with a six, and it has a very important meaning. So in Japan they say when you celebrate your kanreki, so that's your 60th birthday, you're being born again, you start with a new cycle of life. And they have lots of traditions, certain food, and the color red is connected with it. There's lots of stuff around that, around kanreki. So this is one of my kanreki projects.
Leah Roseman:
Would you like to talk about any of the other ones, the new projects?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Well, I did two. So this one was with Saskia, with a recorder player, and the other is with Jasper van 't Hof. And he is a very well-known jazz pianist. He's a bit older than I am. He just turned 75. I've known him many, many years. When I had the vocal trio, we already performed a piece of him and he supported us. He was at some point teacher at our school. I never had him as a teacher, but I ran into him there. And at some point he had advised Marc and me for certain, well, we were in contact. And then I've played with him and Marc, we did trio thing maybe in our career a couple of times. But then I thought, "Okay, he is a very flamboyant, actually expressive, big pianist, I would say really very expressive." And I thought, "He's definitely not a typical musician for a singer to work with because he's so expressive very virtuoso."
But I like him and I thought, "This would be such a challenge." So I asked him, "I would like to do something with you, and I know it's crazy because... What do you think?" And he said, "Well, let's try." Because I told him, I really don't want you to accompany me, but it's not your style. And it would be really crazy to hear you do that. We have to figure out who are you, and who am I when we work together, we have to see, how does it work? So it was an investigation. Very interesting, very interesting. And I'm actually in the process, we're mixing. We recorded in the studio, well, we did two live recordings with audience and then also did a recording in the studio. And I'm in the process. Probably this week, I will master everything. So it's the plan, I'm planning on a CD, making a CD with that, which is, I'm very happy with it.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful. And live recordings are so great, especially for jazz and improvised music. And I really like the one you did with Crossing Canada, combining all these different performances.
Ineke Vandoorn:
I must say with the CD, with Jasper, most of it will be on the record. Most of that will be the tracks that we did in the studio, because sometimes it was complicated also with, we used the computer and drones. And so it worked a little bit better in the studio setup. But actually, many of the CDs Marc and I made are recorded live. We don't always say it on the... But for the Crossing Canada, we really used the live recordings from the clubs, whereas at other CDs, we had performances and we would then play a certain set and we would record it, two or three performances, and then take the best take and bring that to the studio and then do work on the recordings in the studio to make it into an album.
Leah Roseman:
So you're just recording on a computer, a laptop that you're traveling with?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Well, what we did in Canada is many of the venues record their concerts. So whenever we would see that they could do it, or sometimes they would ask, "Are we allowed?" And then we would say, "Okay. Yeah, you are. But then we also want a copy of it." And so that happened with a few recordings.
Leah Roseman:
That's very cool.
Ineke Vandoorn:
With a few performances.
Leah Roseman:
So in terms of keeping balance in your life, I know you've cut back on teaching quite a bit over the years, although you'd like to teach just to have more time for yourself.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yes. I still, I really love to teach. I find it even some kind of a privilege to be able to share your experience and knowledge with someone else. I think that's wonderful. There were quite some years that I felt a little bit like, as a teacher, I always felt very responsible. And then as a musician, of course, you have to be responsible, but you also have to be just, let it go. Just go to the other side. I wanted to have the situation where you not always have to switch between the two. And that works good for me. I like it.
Leah Roseman:
So now you're working with graduate students, but it's just a couple times a month. It's not every week.
Ineke Vandoorn:
I work with both Bachelor and with Master students. With the Bachelor, I work mainly with singers, so they have private lessons with me. One third of their lessons, they will get with me. So I go there 10 times, and then it's a little bit spread out over certain periods. I go there, they get 10 lessons from me each year. And then in six of those weeks, I also do a lot of group lessons. So I will do part of the methodology classes. I will teach a course on physiology and anatomy of the voice, and I will teach vocal ensemble and improv. I do that only six times a year. And then with the masters, I do what I just explained, the study groups and the designing of the workshop program.
Leah Roseman:
Interesting.
Ineke Vandoorn:
So sometimes I'm really busy. Last three weeks I was at ArtEZ like three days a week, and now it's done. Tomorrow I will meet online with the Master students, and then it will be, and then a couple of weeks, nothing. And then I go there for two days. So it's a little bit on and off.
Leah Roseman:
That sounds great.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. I love it.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. I love it.
Leah Roseman:
So speaking of new projects, do you have any plans to write another book about singing or anything else?
Ineke Vandoorn:
What I really would like to write about, and I'm collecting ideas is about vocal improvisation because I've been teaching that for a while, but I noticed that the way, and that has of course to do with the fact that the whole thing that the teaching singers how to improvise, that's not that old. And it has always been taught by instrumentalists. So if you look to books about vocal improvisation, of the 10 or 12 books about that subject, six of them have the title, Vocal Improvisation: An Instrumental Approach. And they will tell you, "You have to sound like an instrument. You have to be able to do everything, what an instrument can," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I don't want to say that these books are wrong or not good. They're actually quite good, but they are for a singer, so frustrating to read all that stuff. And there is no one writing a book about, "Okay, you're a singer, so what is the voice about?" It's not just about singing the right scale on the right chord. And all those books are about that. It's also about sound, about color, about telling a story. And also when people say, "An instrumental approach," is it about sounding like an instrument? Do you have to sound like an instrument? Or do you have to be able to do the same thing as an instrument? Or should you be taught the same way of an instrument is being taught?
So there was this meeting two years ago of European jazz teachers and they say, "Oh, is there anyone who wants to do a short presentation about anything?" And I said, "Well, I want to do something. Give me 10 minutes." And I was for the first time looking into this subject, what I could find about it and I found, not so good. I found all these things like, "Singers are not good in this, singers are not good at that." It's all in those books. So I gave that short introduction, a little bit like what I'm telling you but then with all the examples. And these were all vocal teachers, and when I was done, they were like, "Okay, we have never ever thought about this. It's so strange what you say. It causes so many problems and it's so wrong, but no one ever thought about the fact, why would you teach singers in the same way as any other instrument. I'm not a saxophone."
So I'm working this out. I worked out a presentation and I was invited by the JEN to just educate Jazz Educators Network in the United States. I was invited by a presentation last January, but it was in the middle of COVID, so I couldn't go. But I went deeper into the subject and I did, I presented, I recorded, basically, a 40-minute presentation about a topic. The lecture is important, but I think it's more important to really write a book for singers where they can work, because I have lots and lots of exercises and approaches to do that, because I have been teaching that way for many years at ArtEZ.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful. And you have presented an all solo show, like a short show in of Utrecht?
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah, solo singing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I did that. There was a festival, and then at the beginning of every day, they had some kind of a studio concert where they gave someone the possibility to do something out of the ordinary, what you normally wouldn't do. And then I said, "Yeah." Well, I was invited, and I said, "Well, then I'm going to do something solo." Because it's done by a few instruments. But in fact, a singer, that's such a basic instrument, you should be able to do something solo. Why not? So yeah, I did a solo performance, and after I did that, I did it a couple of times, four or five times.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, wonderful.
Ineke Vandoorn:
Yeah. That was nice.
Leah Roseman:
Well, not only has it been amazing to speak with you today, but I've been listening to your recordings so much and just loving everything you do, and thanks for sharing your music as well.
Ineke Vandoorn:
You're welcome. Thank you for your interest, of course.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you are inspired by Ineke's wisdom, perspectives, and creativity. I have also featured a number of other outstanding vocalists, improvisers, and authors in this series. So check out my episode catalog. Thanks for your support, and have a good week.
