Soesja Citroen (singer/composer) has brought her music to Dutch and international stages for over 25 years. In recent years, she has been singing her own compositions with pianist Berend van den Berg and bassist Ruud Ouwehand. She was born in The Hague, was raised with classical music and as a teenager started to sing jazz. After completing her Master’s in social psychology, she opted for jazz and took voice and piano lessons.
She has performed in many European countries, played at the Yatra Jazz Festival in India, sung in New York and toured though Indonesia.
After making three LP’s with, among others, Nedly Elstak, Willem Breuker and Nico Bunink, she recorded her album Soesja Citroen sings Thelonious Monk in 1983 with Cees Slinger. On this CD, she herself supplied the texts for five Monk compositions.
Between 1984 and 1989 she recorded three albums with the Metropole Orchestra under the direction of Rogier van Otterloo and Robert Farnon. Fifteen of these pieces appear on the compilation CD Yesterdays (1998, CHR70049).
Beginning in 1994, she made her two first CD’s for Challenge Jazz with songs from the American songbook. With reference to the CD Songs for Lovers and Losers (1996, CHR70034), Alex Henderson of All Music Guide wrote, “very soulful phrasing” and “moving and personal interpretations of standards such as Angel Eyes and Lush Life.” The turning point of her career came when she began composing at the age of 48.
Her last three CD’s, Song for Ma (1998, CHR70056), Soesja sings Citroen (2001, CHR70101) and Don’t Cry Baby (2005, CHR70127) contain 40 of her own compositions, both music and text. She received a lot of feedback from the United States, the country whose song tradition Soesja elaborates on with her pieces.
In Jazz Times, she was called “absolutely sensational” and a “formidable composer.” In the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD from 2004, her Monk CD received 4 stars and her song Song for Ma was called “magnificent.” In the newly released book Jazz Singers: The Top 500 by Scott Yanow she is described as one of the top five hundred vocalists in the world.

Dutch pianist Marcel Worms (1951) studied at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam with Hans Dercksen. After his graduation in 1987, he continued his studies with Alexandre Hrisanide and Hans Broekman, specialising in 20th Century piano music and in chamber music. He took also private lessons with the Russian pianist Yuri Egorov.
On the occasion of the centenary (1992) of Darius Milhaud's birthday, Marcel Worms founded the Ensemble Polytonal, which Ensemble performed in an all-Milhaud program in Holland and France in that year.
He premiered early piano works of Arnold Schoenberg in the Icebreaker, centre of modern music in Amsterdam. He performed the complete piano works of Leos Janácek (including a four-hand piece, that he discovered in Brno). His programme Jazz in 20th-Century Piano Music, launched in the 1992/93 Season, was broadcast nation-wide by Dutch radio. It was subsequently released on CD by the Dutch label BVHAAST. As a result Marcel Worms was invited to play this programme in many European countries, North America, Russia, South-Africa and Indonesia. He launched this programme in New York and Washington DC in 1994 and returned to the US for recitals since then almost every year.
In the Season 1994/95 Marcel Worms started a programme titled Mondrian and the music of his time to commemorate Mondrian's death, 50 years ago. Several composers, including Willem Breuker and Theo Loevendie had been commissioned to write for it . This programme was played in many European countries and the USA. About the concert in the National Gallery of Art in Washington the Washington Post wrote: "All this was virtuoso fare and Worms played it with joy, grace and, at times, humour that was contagious and captivating." In 1996 he played this program in the Hermitage Theatre in St.Petersburg, in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. A CD of the program has been released for Emergo Classics.
A CD with the complete music for piano and wind instruments by Francis Poulenc has been released also on the label Emergo Classics. A CD with piano music by Jean Wiéner has been released in 1996 for the BVHAAST label.
His programme 'Blues for piano' to which many well-known Dutch composers contributed with a piece has been premeried in January 1997 at the BIMHUIS, jazz centre in Amsterdam. In the meantime some 170 new Blues pieces have been composed for this project including pieces from around 50 different countries around the world. He played the programme at the Moscow Conservatory in 1997 and at the Conservatories of Beijing and Shanghai in 1998. In 1999 he played it at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Hague, in 2000 at the Festival of Flandria, in 2001 at the Warsaw Autumn Festival and in 2002 at the EU Jazz Festival in Mexico City. In 2004 the program was presented at the Fajr Festival in Iran and in 2005 at the ‘Tbilisi Autumn Festival’ in Georgia. In 2008 he played at the Internatial Piano Festival of Bucaramanga (Colombia). In 2009 he gave concerts in a.o. Uganda and Sudan and also in 2010 he will perform there and in several other African countries. The project has so far been recorded on 4 CD’s.
In 2000 he played his Bluesprogram in all the countries of the Balcan. Composers from all of these countries wrote a contribution for this tour.
In the 1998-1999 season the artist has focused on Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso and their relation to music. Both projects have resulted in a CD recording.
Between 1998 and 2008 concerts have been given by Marcel Worms in many European countries, South-America, South-Africa, Israel, China, Cuba, the United States and the Far East.
The artist is a regular guest on Dutch radio.
Since 2002 Marcel Worms focusses a.o. on the pianoworks of the Spanish composer Federico Mompou. In 2007 he organised a 3 days Mompou Festival in his hometown Amsterdam, that has been completely broadcasted by Dutch radio. In 2009 he released a cd with unpublished works for piano by Mompou, that had been discovered in Barcelona in 2008. He is the first pianist to have released these works on cd.
A tango program, which was performed a.o. in China and Argentina, resulted in a CD with Tangos for Piano in 2002. With flutist Eleonore Pameijer he is working on their 'Six Continents Project' in the Netherlands and abroad. For this project composers from all the 6 Continents wrote a piece in which they expressed their cultural identity. The program has been performed in many European countries, in the USA, Israël and India and it has been released on CD on the occasion of UNESCO’s 60th Anniversary.
A CD by the duo with works by dutch, jewish composers, persecuted by the nazi’s, has been released in 2005.
Since 2006 he has a musical partnership with violinist Ursula Schoch, subsitute concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

The Dutch alto HELENA RASKER (Paula) studied at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and at the Tanglewood Music Center in the US. Helena Rasker has worked with conductors like Marc Minkowski, Fabio Biondi, Michael Corboz, Pascal Rophé, Hartmut Haenchen, Paolo Carignani, Jonathan Stockhammer Christian Zacharias, Oliver Knussen, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Reinbert de Leeuw and Jaap van Zweden, with orchestras like Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Bamberger Symphoniker. Her repertoire includes oratorios by Bach, Händel, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Dvořák, song cycles and symphonies by Mahler, Shostakovich, Wagner and Frank Martin, as well as chamber music by Ravel, Brahms, Britten, Ligeti, Sciarrino, Nono and Gubaidulina. Her opera repertoire includes roles in Orfeo ed Euridice, Dritte Dame in Die Zauberflöte, Irene in Theodora and La Furie in Van Vlijmen’s Thyeste. With Dutch National Opera, she has sung in Moses und Aron, Rêves d’un Marco Polo, After Life, Adam in Ballingschap, Legende, Elektra, Guillaume Tell, Die Walküre and Laika.