BIOGRAPHY   ERIC VAN DER HEIJDEN

 

Born on March 4 1960 in Eindhoven. I am the father of 3 children. My first encounter with music was at the age of 7 at the musicschool (the recorder). After musicschool I actually wanted to play the piano but my parents preferred I went to a wind-band to play clarinet (a question of money). Soon, my younger brother also began to play the clarinet. In that time I played with the music of Ekseption (Rick van der Linden). Especially I was fascinated by the way he transferred classical music to popmusic. I got acquainted with the music of Mike Oldfield. I played the track "In Dulce Jubilo" with clarinet, soprano-recorder, alto-recorder, 2 cassette-recorders and endless "pingponging". At the wind-band I now changed to oboe. But I was no student. I found playing etudes deadly boring. Weekly I was punished by my teacher. "Practising, practising and again practising was the motto". Now, also my second brother (Tony) started blowing his trumpet. This brought something lose by my father that at an older age he first started playing recorder and then tuba. Way into puberty, I wanted something else and bought a drumkit. At the attic I played with the music of The Beatles, The Sweet, Boston, Queen, ELO, ELP, etc. Together with friends and my nephew Harold we played at family-parties.

Although I initially had something against synthesizers (that’s Queen’s fault because in their first LP’s it said "no synthesizers" and I thought the same about that), I got fascinated by the first time I had a MiniMoog in my hands. Only in ’85 I bought my first synth, a Yamaha DX 100. In this time colleges pointed me on big names as Tangerine Dream and Vangelis. I was contaminated. I programmed the sequences of Tangerine Dream in my DX 100. When I walked into Ron Boots at the second KLEMday in ’89 with a DX 100 in front of his belly, I yelled at him "I also have one of those". Ron invited my to his home to play on his synths. This was the beginning of our friendship.

Shortly after that I bought my second synth, a Roland D5, and with this soon my first piece "Time Is Running" was born at Ron’s house. He encouraged my to produce more. This resulted in a cassette with the title "Lightning Times", exiting times because this marked the birth of Synteam and what now is still known as the "Eindhoven School".
With "Lightning Times", which formed the basis for the CD "Universal Time Zone", I began my first live performances during the KLEMday in ‘91. Together with Harold (the same nephew) we were very nervous at first as support-act for John Dyson, after this the live Virus never went away. Together with Ron and Bas (Broekhuis) we started playing on a regular basis in our own concert hall Unitas. There were so many German cars in the streets that the neighbourhood was wondering, what was going on.

In these times, Ron and I played around together so much in the studio, that the basis was formed for the live music in the years to come. Until today with two synthesizers each we can improvise live for an hour without having arranged one note before we start. Although Ron and I each have our own style, we supplement each other well. Concerts with, amongst others, Harald Grosskopf (Berlin and Nijmegen), Klaus Hoffman Hoock (to much to mention) and John Kerr (for example live for the German Radio) are highlights. The concert tour in ’95 where we successively played in France, England and Germany was a big happening. In France we played for 12000 (!) spectators on the beach in Dunkirk and in Germany the barn simply was over-crowded. People were hanging outside with their legs!

For me, music is an emotional outlet. You can hear this in my music. Especially on "Da Capo" are some pieces in which you can hear how I felt at that moment.
"Da Capo" was released on October 17 during E-Live 1998.
On February 7 1999 the song "Da Capo" from this album was voted nr.1 in the Schallwende Elections in Essen, Germany and a few months later the #2 song during the Schwingungen elections. The album DA CAPO was voted #10 "best album of the year 1998".

At this moment, Ron and I work on my third album in the studio. In my heart I am a romantic and that can always be heard in my music. On "Universal Time Zone" you could regularly hear the influences of Tangerine Dream, where on "Da Capo" my love for the music of Vangelis comes more on the foreground. I find this man one of my biggest examples. On my third CD, a more own style will be heard but my roots will of course always be heard. I hope you have as much pleasure listening to my music as I had making it.

The latest album of Eric is called "Cosmic Flight no. 3" and was released on E-Live 2003 where Eric also performed live.

Eric gave his fantastic Live-Comeback on a concert with Ron Boots, Kees Aerts, Bas Broekhuis, Frank Dorittke and Harold van der Heijden on January 16th 2010 in Orschoit.

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