Marc van Roon

Marc’s interest in jazz and improvisation was sparked at a young age by his father, himself a professional jazz pianist, and he began classical piano lessons at the age of ten.  Marc studied music privately until the age of sixteen when he enrolled in the music program at the Royal Music Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands. He studied jazz piano with Frans Elsen and classical piano with Geoffrey Madge and Lanny Kho. Marc graduated in 1991 and left for a post conservatorial study in New York City, where he studied with jazz pianists Barry Harris, Richie Beirach and Kenny Werner.

He returned to the Netherlands in 1993 and started his own trio and continued to collaborate with other musicians.  Marc co-created numerous connecting music conversations with fellow musicians, teachers and peers world-wide. He has recorded over a dozen albums as a leader and has been featured on many recordings as a sideman. He joined forces with jazz musicians Dave Liebman, Clark Terry, Art Farmer, Charlie Mariano, Billy Hart, Santi Di Briano, Tony Lakatos, Michael Moore, and many Dutch jazz artists. 

In the role of creative co-producer Marc produced saxophonist Tineke Postma’s last two albums: The Dawn of Light, which was awarded the Edison prize, and Sonic Halo, a project with saxophonist Greg Osby. Together with the Tineke Postma quartet he has collaborated with many internationally acclaimed musicians such as Grammy winning artist Terri Lyne Carrington, drummer and tabla player Dan Weiss, bassist Linda Oh, the Dutch Metropole Orchestra and singer Esperanza Spalding. 

He participates on a well-received duet album Drumwise by Dutch drummer Wim Kegel (available from NativeDSD). Since 1995 Marc has performed widely with the European Jazz Trio. Three albums received the Swing Journal Gold Disc award in Japan and the DVD received the ‘DVD of the year award’ in 2005. Their tours have brought them to various famous concert halls including the Sapporo Concert Hall, Suntory Hall and Bunkyo Civic Concert Hall in Tokyo, The Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Taiwan, The Organ Hall in Chisinau, and the National Concert Hall Taipei, Taipei City, Seoul Arts Center in South Korea. 

photo: from booklet ‘Inventions & Variations’