Erik Van Der Luijt - History

History

Erik van der Luijt started playing the piano at the age of four. He studied jazz piano with Rob van Kreeveld and Rob van Bavel at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he participated in master classes with Michel Petrucciani and Barry Harris.

His concert performances have taken him to Sweden, France, Belgium, Indonesia, Germany and the United Kingdom. The album The Sweetest Sounds - Ilse Huizinga Sings the Songs of Richard Rodgers (2001), to which he made a major contribution as an arranger, producer and pianist, resulted in his wife Ilse Huizinga's first nomination for Holland's top music award, The Edison Award.

In August 2004 he was a finalist at the Deloitte Jazz Award 2004 at the Bimhuis cultural centre in Amsterdam. In the same year he conducted a series of masterclasses in Indonesia, at the invitation of the Conservatory of Rotterdam.

In 2004 he also released the privately produced and critically acclaimed album Express Yourself, consisting exclusively of his own compositions and on which he is accompanied by Branko Teuwen on double bass and Victor de Boo on drums. Van der Luijt quotes the fact that two members of the trio had recently married and all three had recently become a father as the drive behind the album. An increased sense of responsibility made them search more than ever for a distinctive style in order to draw more attention to themselves. Three days before the original recording date he decided that recording standards was not the best way to do this and began writing his own compositions. The album Express Yourself was hailed as "a masterpiece" in the press and compared to landmark albums by Tommy Flanagan and Bill Evans.

In 2005 Erik founded a new band called VEGAS based on his compositions featuring guitar player Anton Goudsmit. Erik plays keyboards in this formation and trio members Branko Teuwen (double bass) and Victor de Boo (drums) complete this quartet.