Jochem van Dijk

NYC-based composer and improvising bass guitarist, married to Fay Victor. Started in music by playing a homemade tea-chest bass with the highschool Dixieland band in his native town Apeldoorn, a suburban community in the east of The Netherlands. Numerous bands in his home country followed, with both covers and self penned songs. Playing bass with a circus band for 5 years in the summers led to a master’s thesis on Circus Music, sealing a Master’s Degree as an Ethnomusicologist. He wrote the music for a number of stage plays for Belgian Theater Amsterdam, an experience that greatly shaped his compositional thinking. Stateside highlights include his arrangement of Strange Fruit performed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 2005 at the Apollo Theatre, and the performance in 2009 of his pocket cantata Stuyvesant Reluctant at the Dia:Beacon. Jochem performs currently around New York and had the privilege to share the stage amongst others with his wife Fay Victor, Marvin Sewell, Jason Nazary, Daniel Carter, Darius Jones, Jeremy Carlstedt, Federico Ughi, Michael ‘TA’ Thompson, Ras Moshe, Anders Nilsson, Nick Didkovsky, Evan Gallagher, Claire Debrunner, Timucin Sahin and many others.