BIOGRAPHY
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Jeroen Simons:
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Jeroen Simons (Born: 25-02-1978) is a drummer, drumteacher, producer, composer.
He started at the age of 11 with classical percussion lessons at the local musicschool, Goes, The Netherlands. He played in marching bands and orchestra and started playing in local bands at the age of 15 and recorded his first demo CD 2 years later with the band Tremor.
Jeroen started studying drums much later, at the age of 19, where he would take private drumlessons with jazz/fusion drummer Chris Strik. In the meantime he recorded a full length album with the band Cassiopeia, where several music critics mentioned his drumtalent.
ln 1999 he attended the conservatory of Tilburg and the year after Rotterdam, where he studied with Fred Krens, Hans van Oosterhout and Juan van Emmerloot.
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In 2002 Jeroen got a call to join Sahara Dust, which was later called: EPICA, a gothic-metal band, formed by Mark Jansen, after his depature with After Forever. It was not necessary to do an audition, because Mark knew his playing from Cassiopeia live. Jeroen was playing in 6 different bands meantime and now he had to concentrate only on Epicas succes. In 4 years he toured around the globe and performed in 22 countries with Epica at festivals like: Graspop Belgium, Mera Luna Germany, Pinkpop & Lowlands The Netherlands, Progpower USA etc. Epica recorded several albums in first class studios (Gateway studio Wolfsburg Germany, Studio 1, Hilversum The Netherlands etc.) and as their drummer Jeroen appeared in the Slagwerkkrant (Dutch drummagazine) and also Modern Drummer with interviews/reviews.
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In 2005 Jeroen signed an A endorsement deal with AMEDIA cymbals and BALBEX sticks. Both brands were tested by Jeroen first and he was very impressed with their quality. In the same period, Ed Warby (Aryeon, Gorefest) also signed an A deal with AMEDIA, made them both the first official endorsers of AMEDIA in The Netherlands.
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In 2006 it was time for Jeroen to choose a new path, the last gig he did with Epica was in Los Angeles after a month touring in the USA/Canada.
Jeroen wanted to be a session-studiodrummer in several musicstyles and a drumteacher and started his own drumschool/company Drums4u! and began writing drumexercises and appeared with 5 drumlessons online on the Dutch drumwebsite: Slagwerkwereld.com.
In 2007 Jeroen played as an sessiondrummer at the Almelo meets Nashville festival with wordclass artists like: Pat Bergeson, Richard Smith, Dave Pomeroy, Annie Sellick, Joscho Stephan and Fender-king guitarist Thomas Blug from Germany.
He also did several drumclinics for Amedia & Balbex since 2007: Drummersday 2007, together with Ed Warby, Arien van Weesenbeek, etc., with an excellent review of his performance there afterwards online...With Marz (Maartje Simons), Jeroen performed as a duo at the Beat it! drumfestival, Overloon, The Netherlands. CYMPAD, a brand with special acoustic treatement to replace the traditional cymbalfelt, was the third endorsementdeal Jeroen signed.
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In 2008 he featured, together with Hans Eijkenaar and Lucas van Merwijk, at an article of Slagwerkkrant, where their old teacher Fred Krens would be honoured.
Metalektro was a project with toptalent saxplayer/composer Frans Blanker (New Cool Collective, Candy Dulfer, Session) and with their mix of metal, fusion, jazz, avant-garde classical soundscape they made an excellent DVD together.
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In 2009 Jeroen started studying recordingtechniques based on drumrecordings and mixing in general. Practising drums and focusing on improvement he still did at that time, besides teaching/studying/recordings/performing live...
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2010 was similar to 2009 in terms of focus and work.
In 2011 Jeroen would put a lot of time in recording drumrhythms and improvisations for YouTube and you can see him perform technically very advanced drumtechniques there for example.
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In august 2012 he also started teaching at the region musicschool, Zeeuwse Muziekschool and played with their teachersband (Gino Mehauden, Rob de Nijsband and Marjon van Iwaarden, 2 Unlimited 2, Frank Peeters, to name a few...).
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In march 2013 Jeroen would shine one last time with Epica for their retrospect live dvd, for over 3500 screaming fans, at the Venue Klokgebouw Eindhoven, with the song: Quietus.
On YouTube he expanded his work/techniques in SERIES, where he would do artistic SAMPLESONG/SINGING/SESSION/GROOVE etc. (For example: Ad Sluijter, Epica and Zendhy Bloody Orange from Indonesia and Epsylon from Belgium, etc.)
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In January 2014 Jeroen joined 70s coverband Lead Balloon with vocalist Robert Soeterboek (Ayreon,Helloise,Wicked Sensation), while teaching/recording/practicing/studying & playing in other coverbands also.
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In the end of 2015 Jeroen put all of his compositions for advanced drumset/students & beginner ensembles on YouTube as a photoslideshow (THE WORKS), made in between 2007-2015.
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Medio may 2016 Jeroen started a 80s rock cover-projectband (Dan Stennis Band), together with Stan Verbraak (Helloise) and the rhythm section of Lead Balloon. They performed several shows in Holland as in Germany.
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AKHETH, a symphonic female fronted metalband with Mahafsoun (Metal bellydance & model) on lead vocals and Roberto Sunga on guitars/programming contacted Jeroen in november 2016 to play drums on their single The Asylum. Jeroen tracked his drums in december and did also percussion and co-produced everything behind the scenes...
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Fresh on New Year 2017 Jeroen and Dutch fusion/jazz guitarplayer Chris Krekelberg finished mixing Chris his first solo album with 9 compositions in the fusion-jazz genre, but with some funny things...
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TO BE CONTINUED...