Both my parents were musicians, with concerts as close as at home to abroad, with lots of travelling. My dad made recordings of his concerts since the late 60's, and I started helping him aged 6. That's how it began.
My first recording was in 1985, in Bielefeld (Germany), using AKG and Schoeps microphones and an Eela Audio mixer, quite a luxury for a little boy! I do however feel that it also helped developing an 'ear' for making recordings, just because doing something good would indeed pay off. Although it's still a hobby in the sense that I don't make a living from recording, I made hundreds of recordings, mostly live concert recordings for the ensembles, but also for broadcast purposes and it includes a few CD recording sessions.
The repertoire varies from solo (piano, violoncello, violin) to large choirs with orchestra. Locations vary from livings to the big concert halls and churches.
Starting of with an underrated Sony cassettedeck or a TEAC 35-2B reel-to-reel (depending on the situation), I moved on to DAT (Tascam DA-30) in the nineties, and subsequently the solid state field recorder (Tascam HD-P2). The last one with a separate Universal Audio M2192 AD converter, which is so good that I can still use it, it offers SACD quality (Super Audio CD). The old Eela Audio mixer has been replaced by a custom built (1995), with John Hardy/Jensen Twin Servo mic amps. Of course the microphone collection grew, and now includes besides AKG and Schoeps: B&K, DPA, AKG (with Rens Heijnis 60V mod), Audio Technica, Sennheiser en Earthworks.
The first time I used the computer on location was in 2001, for a multitrack recording of a live performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion (2 stereo submixes), I also played in the orchestra (concertmaster 2nd orchestra).
I graduated from Utrecht University with a master in Physical Geography, and started working in archaeology. After an intermezzo of 7 years at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu, RIVM) as architect Geografical Information Systems, I moved on to teach at two universities of applied sciences. Then I returned to the archaeology, where I'm currently working as Head IT Operations.
Besides these jobs, I worked freelance for the Geoacademie, RIVM, RAAP and Nibble IT. Mainly teaching courses in Postgres/PostGIS spatial databases, and incidentally live recording technique.