About

CARLO: ‘Being a professional saxophonist and making a living out of it in a nice way is already something I’m grateful for. It even gets better when you get to the point that you can record your own music with all of these cats.’

Carlo grew up in a quite small village somewhere in the east of the Netherlands and was introduced to the saxophone through the local fanfare. During high school he got to know different types of saxophone music but…., slightly to late for choosing a career in music at that time. But eager enough to leave the village and move to Enschede. It took some time and only after finishing ‘industrial engineering & management’ at the University of Twenty, while developing his musical skills, and a short career in Utrecht he found out what he actually already knew… ‘This is not my path’.

So eventually he decided moving to Amsterdam and applying for the Conservatory of Amsterdam where he graduated in 2003.
Already at University Carlo found out that he likes a lot of different types of music. So it was naturally to explore all the options who are available. Carlo played in many Bigbands, Coverbands, Jazzbands, Clubs, Theatre shows and even Musical Comedy with ‘De Wereldband’.

Then in 2005 he started a quite innovative project called ‘Beatsclassics’ which combined all of the above in a multidisciplinary collective with DJ, VJ, Sax, Vocals and Percussion. For more than 10 years they played all over in the business and private entertainment scene. Two spin-offs where added to this concept, being ‘Loungeclassics’ and DJ-Saxofonist.nl.

But being an entrepreneur leads to new horizons and challenges. There was a wish for more colleagues and band music again. So Carlo started playing in the most precious open stage of Amsterdam, called ‘The Open Bak’. Further on did he start a band called ‘Nomads in Jazz’, started writing his own compositions, and started collaborating with Aristo (Aristo’s Hornz) while playing in the band of dutch artist Danny Vera.

The collaboration with Aristo led to the birth of a common project called ‘Funkraum‘. A large band which plays original compositions from Fred and Carlo. In a contemporary vibe, but sometimes loosely inspired on some music which influenced Fred and Carlo both. For example Maceo Parker and The Brecker Brothers. Especially in this constellation the latter is a big inspiration.