ABOUT

 

Sanne Huijbregts (1992) is an award winning vocalist, vibraphonist and composer. In addition to being an outstanding singer, she surrounds on stage herself with electronics, various percussion instruments, and the Xylosynth(electric vibraphone) to complement her voice with a myriad of tones and textures. Her music is a genre defying dreamscape of loops, lyricism and intimate compositions.

Huijbregts stands out as an artist whose vision and abilities extend across several mediums. Besides her musicianship, she is a talented photographer and film maker who designs her own artwork and directs her own videos, presenting a strong personal vision of what her work should both sound and look like.

Sanne Huijbregts, singer and composer, born in Amsterdam in 1992, showed great interest in music from an early age. With singing as a basis, she received her first piano lessons as a 6-year-old and learned to write small compositions, combining both instruments and laying the foundations of a musical education. In 2004, in addition to secondary school, she attended the Junior Jazz College (JJC) course at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, with singing as a major and piano as a minor. She soon met Peter Guidi, the leading teacher in the field of young big bands, and she was included in his youngest group, the Jazz Junior Big Band, as a singer, pianist and vibraphonist. In 2007 she won the Talent Hunt of Jazzclub Langs de Lijn, co-organized by vibraphonist Frits Landesbergen.

Guidi's JJC training and circuit - with the opportunity to grow into the Jazz Generation Big Band, the Jazz Focus Big Band and the Jazz Mania Big Band - gave her the opportunity to develop and develop and to gain years of stage experience. She traveled with the Big Bands to Switzerland in 2005 and 2006 for the Langnau Jazz Nights Workshops, played on stages such as the Bimhuis, the Concertgebouw and the North Sea Jazz Festival and won prizes such as a soloist prize at the 2009 Meerjazz Festival and a soloist prize at the Princess Christina Competition in 2010. In 2008 and 2009 she also attended the Summer School at Codarts in Rotterdam, organized by Hein van de Geijn, and the Summer School at the CvA in 2010.

In 2010 she completed her secondary education and the JJC and she started a Bachelor's degree in singing at the CvA with main subject teachers Lydia van Dam and Sylvi Langelaan. In the 2nd year of her studies she founded the vocal group the New Amsterdam Voices with her classmates (in which she sang until 2013) and in her last year she met Eran Har Even and the project EvenSanne was founded. With this duo she won the Incentive Prize of the Keep an Eye Jazz Awards in 2013, and released the CD Something So Sweet in 2014.

She passed her Bachelor's exam with a 9.5 in 2014 and went straight to the European Jazz Masters (EUJAM), a special training with 2 exchanges. She chose to study at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC) in Copenhagen for six months and at the Jazz Institute Berlin (JIB) in Berlin. As part of the EUJAM, she participated every six months in a project week, organized in 4 of the 5 affiliated cities: Amsterdam, Berlin, Trondheim and Paris. In Berlin she took lessons with renowned vibraphonist David Friedman and in the 2 years of her Masters she explored the main question of her thesis How To Perform Solo As A Singer (without the use of accompanying instruments). She developed a solo set by using loop stations and a Glockenspiel and performed with this set-up a number of times in, among others, the Jazzhouse in Copenhagen and the Bimhuis in Amsterdam. She also started her blog called Be Gingered (www.begingered.com), a video blog with short music videos with spherical images. In the last year of her studies, her band EvenSanne (now grown into a quartet) won The Records 2016 from the Keep an Eye Jazz Foundation. A cash prize of €10,000 awarded for recording a CD.

In 2016 she completed her Master of Music with a 9.5, an award for creativity and an 8 for her thesis. After her studies she released the album What If with EvenSanne with a CD release concert in the Bimhuis on May 31, 2017. This record received rave reviews in the Netherlands and abroad, including 4**** in Het Parool by Jan Jasper Tamboer. for the concert, and 5***** in the German magazine Frizz. Maarten van Heuven wrote for Vrije Sounds: “Singer Sanne Huijbregts tends not to please, but to remain true to herself.” After a showcase at the Injazz Festival, EvenSanne was chosen as the first band for the 'Going Dutch' exchange between Great Britain and the Netherlands. As a result, they had a showcase in Leeds and played at the Manchester Jazz Festival. In addition, the CD was nominated in 2017 for 'Best Vocal Jazz Album' at the Edison Jazz/World Awards (one of three nominees).

In 2016 she was also invited as a guest soloist by the Spoken Saxophone Quartet, a saxophone quartet with voice and drums, which released the album called Arctic Monsoon in early 2018. Beaux Jazz also offered carte blanche in late 2017, which resulted in a collaboration of several months with drummer Joost Lijbaart (Jury Honing, Under the Surface) under the band name 'Knock on Wood', in which she accompanied herself on the Xylosynth (electronic vibraphone). The duo played in the Bimhuis (Uitmarkt) and at the Music Meeting Festival.

In 2018 the collective Greener Grass was founded, and they played at the Set Up Festival in Venice, among others. This year they will release their debut album called Greener Grass. In 2021 she sang soprano in MARS, the new-makers production for the Grachtenfestival by Camiel Jansen. She also played Murakami's last shows with Ikarai, and was part of Yanna Pelser's group Albertine. The group Vox Sturnus was also created, a collective including Margriet Sjoerdsma, Thora Sveinsdottir (Stargaze), Maaike van der Linde (Stargaze) and Annie Tångberg (Metropole Orkest).
Greener Grass @ de Roode Bioscoop

At the beginning of 2020, Huijbregts started the online series A Song A Day due to the corona lockdown. In this Youtube series she invites two guest musicians per episode to write and record one piece in one day in her home studio, where the entire process can be attended as a live stream. Thanks in part to a grant from the Norma Feniks Fund, she has the opportunity to play no less than 10 episodes in 2022 with Fuensanta Mendez, Sun-Mi Hong, Geonne Hartman, Yanna Pelser, Marta Arpini, Mischa Porte Jasper and Bram Stadhouders and George Dumitriu.
FuenSanSun - A Song A Day #1

In 2019 Huijbregts launched the solo project Sanne Sanne by producing the single Tremble at home, which was picked up by Sublime FM and was also named 'record of the month' in their Jazzism column. The project grew into a quartet with Roosmarijn Tuenter (vocals and viola), Pat Cleaver (bass and vocals) and Jeroen Batterink (drums), and their debut album is expected in early 2023.
Free Enough - Sanne Sanne

 

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