Marieke Stordiau

Biography Marieke Stordiau

When I was fourteen I learned how to play the bassoon. I took classes with Willem Ravelli in Arnhem. A couple of years later I started studying bassoon at the Amsterdam Conservatory. My teachers were John Mostard and Brian Pollard.

From 1984 until 2001 I was bassoonist in the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 2001 I have been working as a freelancer for orchestras from The Hague, Hilversum, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. In 2002 I founded the Lazy Woman Foundation (Stichting De Luie Vrouw). This foundation initiates performances in which fairy tales from different cultures play a key role. In different chamber music arrangements and in cooperation with various composers and actors, these story-telling concerts for both young and old came to life. We also produced two CDs: De Wolkenberg (tales originating from Thailand, Japan, China and Tibet) together with actor Peter van der Linden and Marijn Korff de Gidts, our second CD was De Twaalf Vensters van Kristal (The Twelve Crystal Windows, Russian fairy tales) with Peter van der Linden, Marijn Korff de Gidts en Jacobien Rozemond. In 2002 Dutch public television (VPRO) broadcasted our program Fairy Tales from the Land of the Rising Sun. In dozens of concert halls, schools and festivals story-telling concerts were performed, with tales such as “The Thankful Tree”, “The Dancing Crane” and “The Samurai and the Zen Master”.  In 2007 I became bassoonist with the Hexagon Ensemble: www.hexagon-ensemble.com.

Making music is the most beautiful thing in life there is. Because of that there is not much time left for all those other great things, such as travelling, reading beautiful literature, gardening, cooking and eating. The last two activities are most frequently entertained out of that list.

The instrument that I mostly use is a Heckel Bassoon, built in 2002. Sometimes I also play a classical bassoon, which is a Grenzer copy built by Peter de Koningh. Finally, for the really low register I use a Contra Forte (Wolf).