User:Wim Dijkgraaf

Wim Dijkgraaf (born 1970 in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands) is a renowned jazz harmonica player, educator and innovator with an acadamic background as a composer of contemporary classical music.

Mr. Dijkgraaf immigrated in 2008 to Brazil, first living in the small town Itapipoca in the North-East of Brazil. In 2011 he moved to Rio de Janeiro to give is musical career and inspiration as a classical composer a new impulse.

Inspired by Kenny Werner’s publications on Effortless Mastery, he is widely recognized as an innovator in the field of effortless harmonica playing and as such is influential point of reference for many harmonica players of a younger generation.

[Toots Thielemans] certainly was an important source of inspiration when he started playing the harmonica at the age of 19. But overtime he developed his own playing style and a highly personal sound that he is so well know for today.

Besides the sound of his harmonica, his approach towards improvisation is remarkable too. Inspired by composers like Olivier Messiaen and Béla Bartók, he creates melodic phrases that sound modern and sometimes intellectual yet lyrical, romantic and always highly accessible. It is in his way of improvising that a strong background in classical composition becomes immediately clear; the art of effortlessly constructing original material out of instantly invented small musical building blocks.