Lien Kooijman

I write and sing my own music, that's the main thing. :-)
I'm the daughter of a singing, banjo-playing and performing father, so I grew up with music, concerts and showbizz. My actual musical career started at the age of 6 in first grade. I always knew I wanted to sing, so I went to music lessons and chose to play the piano, only because of the reason I could sing while playing it.
I started performing at the age of 16, alone. Later, I got very interested in folkmusic and started my own folkband Kandoris in 1998. In that band I learned to play the accordeon and the 5-string banjo. We still play concerts with Kandoris. We play styles like Irish folk, Americana, country, cajun, bluegrass, Flemish folk and gospel.
I met my husband in the same year on a folkfestival and we started singing and playing together, as a duo. Mostly Dutch songs.
In 2014 we announced a program about the commemoration of the First World War "Den Grooten Oorlog tussen de Patatten". Surprisingly, people from the whole world got interested. That's why we had the chance to play some concerts in British Columbia, Canada in 2017 and 2018.
In 2019 our first son was born, so we mainly stopped playing music that time, mainly because the baby cried too much when I touched the banjo or the fiddle... :-)
In 2020 I started a new project 'Leanne' with two very good musicians: Lee Fonteyn (guitar and vocals) and Alex Jacxsens (bass and keys) and we recorded some new songs who will be released in a few weeks.