Coen
Helfenrath,
the
son of a goldsmith and clockmaker, Coen Helfenrath was born in Holland
in 1950 to a music-loving family. His mother was a devotional home singer.He
took classical piano lessons for two years as a young child, although
he preferred playing soccer to practicing his scales.
His interest in the piano and in music revived after high school when
he started to play popmusic with multi instrumentalist Marten van Batenburg.
Helfenrath earned a degree in psychology and began a 25-year career as
an astrologer. At the same time music became an increasingly important
element in his life. Throughout the 1980s he collaborated extensively
with the Dutch musician Rinse Posthuma. They produced a vast amount of
popsongs, and also made composition for films, theatre and dance performances.
There were lots of sessions with other musicians in the House to Hyde
studio's in that days. It was during this period that Helfenrath developed
his improvisational skills.
He is also the originator of the so called Minimal Mantra Music,
in which minimal music is used for mantric- and meditational purposes.
His interest in lyrics and poetry also further developed in the 80s.
In 1988 he wrote a song-cycle based on the works of
Edgar Allen Po.
He also has worked with emerging artists in developing their
singing potential and self-expression.
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Ted
de Jong,
born in Amsterdam in
1954, began studying the tabla at the age of fourteen. Among his teachers
were the late Ustad Latif Ahmed Khan and Ustad Faiyaz Khan, who were largely
responsible for training de Jong into one of the foremost Western tabla
players of today.
He has vast experience in the world of Classical Hindustani Music, accompanying
many well known artists, including Sachdev, Prabhatre, Sruti Sadolikar,
Ustad Rais Khan. Pt. Ram Naryan, Pt. Budhaditya Mukherjee, Pt. Hariprasad
Chaurasia, and many others.
As well as being a performer, de Jong has lectured and taught at the Rotterdam
Academy of Music and Dance in the Netherlands since 1987. In 1999 he became
coordinator of the school's prestigious Indian Music Department, which
welcomes guest teachers like Ustad Faiyaz Khan, Pt. Buddhadev Dasgupta,
Pt. Budhaditya Mukherjee, and Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia on a yearly basis.
For Ted de Jong, classical Indian music is the fundament of his musical
training. In addition to his specialization in the art of tabla, de Jong
has studied sitar as well as classical Indian vocal music, which he studied
with the late Ustad Yunus Hussain Khan of the Agra Gharana.
From this basis, de Jong has sought out new ways of presenting Indian
music to a wider audience through experimental (fusion) projects with
other traditions. His collaborations have included performing and producing
work with Florian Friecke (Popol Vuh), Al Gromer Khan - although in a
more classical context, and Klaus Wiese, with whom he produced several
CDs. >From 1980-85, as a multi-percussionist, he toured world-wide
and released six albums (Polygram, EMI) with the group Flairck.
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