Home

News

History

Band members

Music

Links

deze pagina in het Nederlands

 

André Kamer

Band members

Personalia

Inspiration

Gear

Name: André Kamer
Date & place of birth: 6 April 1962, Utrecht
Longshanks founder

Autobiography:

As my parents met while singing in a classical choir, I was raised on classical music and was a regular visitor of concerts by the time I was ten years old.
At the age of eleven, Elementary School brought me into contact with pop music. Coincidently (the year being 1973) a lot of the pop music of that time had their roots in classical music in one way or another.
I took more and more to pop and rock music and lost interest in "true" classical music.
In the years to follow my taste evolved from (glam)rock via hardrock to symphonic rock and from there I came full circle, back to classical music again by the time I was nineteen.

I always had been fascinated with playing a musical instrument and every now and again I had experimented on piano or organ.
Inspired by symphonic rock band Rush (mainly by their albums: "Hemispheres", "Permanent Waves" and "Moving Pictures") I bought an electrical guitar (in 1983) and learned how to play. My goal: writing my own music.

In 1987 I founded the studio band Longshanks. Between 1989 and 1993 we recorded some 10 songs, which are currently (after much delay) being digitised for release on CD. Some of them are already represented here on the Music page along with some more recent material.

Though for the outside world the band ceased to exist after 1993, for me it never did. That was because right from the beginning it had, for me, been one way to express my creativity (painting was another one). The fact that I was the sole remaining band member did not stop the creative flow. It just ment that I had to record all of the parts myself! The advent of the PC, with software like Cakewalk (now Sonar), made it possible for me to do exctly that. Ofcourse I'll never write a bass-track or a drums-track like a real bass player or a real drummer would, but then again I've learned it the same way as they would, that is: by listening to how other musiscians have written their parts in songs that inspire me. Still, there remained one part that I could never fill myself: the vocals (my singing is hopless).

Over the years I've taken part in several one-time projects (mostly live) and in an improvisation band called The Masters of Periodicity.

From the beginning of the nineties I have also ventured into classical music, inspirators here were Bach, Verdi and Mahler. Many of my compositions have been labeled 'soundtrack' material (which isn't very strange, considering my fascination with both images and music).

A major project (in the last 10 years) has been the writing of a Requiem, which still needs some orchestration to be done. One (instrumental) part of this Requiem can be found on the Classical Music page of my "imagesandmusic" website.
Another project that is still ongoing is the writing of a "Bridal Duite": three parts are finished, which leaves three to go.

But with the return of Alex, my focus ofcourse has turned to writing symphonic rock for Longshanks....

André recording the solo for "The Web of Life" (2008)

André with brushes and airbrush (May 1987)

Rocking Heaven Down with Jeroen Steenbeek and Peter ten Haaft in the basement of 'de Koornbeurs' (1990)

André at the live performance for radio station "Omroep Delft" at Delftdag

Design for a business card (2001)

André doing the mixdown of "The Web of Life"
(23 February 2008)