Welcome!
If you want to know more about me and my music you’ve come to the right place. I’m a music composer and arranger, lyrics-writer, singer, guitar player, studio-engineer, producer and a personal vocalists and performance coach.
So a little bit of everything… but just enough to have a lot of fun making music!
On this website you can read my (musical) biography and listen to some of my original music.
You can even find out how my recording studio ‘StudiOjo’ came about…
Hope you’ll enjoy reading!
"Making Music Moves Me"
The SHORT list…
1957: Mario Delano Walzberg born on 6 September
1967-1970: Singer in choir ‘Haags Matrozenkoor’
1971: Started playing the guitar
1973-1994: Singer in bands (LifeWire, Backwards Overgear, Impact and others)
1977: Started first recordings on tape recorder
1985: Married to Karin (daughter Lori born in 1985, daughter Emily born in 1988)
1994-1995: Singer/arranger/guitarist in vocal group ‘4-Out!’
1996: Married to Vera (son Levy born in 1996)
1996-2005: Duo (as a singer) with pianist Theo van Hulst
1998: Started digital recording, together with Theo van Hulst, in my living-room
2001: Produced the (cover-) cd ‘Together’ with Theo van Hulst; the title-song I composed myself
2006: Produced the (cover-) cd ‘After all‘ with Theo van Hulst
2006-2007: Performed as a (cover-) singer with pianist Jan de Bloeme
2007: Moved from The Hague to the small town Wateringen, opening large(r) studio
2009 and on: Coached singers
2011: A song I wrote together with Ronn van Etten, was broadcasted on national TV!
2012: Wrote a syllabus ‘Singing.in the studio’
2013: Wrote the song ‘One Night Girl’ together with my son Levy
2012-2015: Composed and arranged numerous songs with pianist and drummer Jaap van Beek
2013: Vera Kramer joined in writing songs with me and Jaap
2013: Founded the music writers guild ‘TrippleNotes’ with Vera and Jaap
2014: Cd album produced by TrippleNotes (in English): ‘In the here and now’
2014: Launched website www.TrippleNotes.nl (no longer present)
2015: Cd album produced by TrippleNotes (in Dutch): ‘TrippleNotes NL’
2015: Launched the website www.walzberg.com (still under construction, just like me)
2016 and on: Wrote several songs with Vera Kramer, Jaap van Beek, and some with Jesper Karduks
1975-up to now: Writing songs…
Click here to listen on YouTube to most of the original songs I produced.
(or simply search ‘Songs Mario Walzberg’ or even ‘Mario Walzberg’ inside YouTube).
Click here to read more information about those songs.
Almost all songs were recorded at and produced by StudiOjo (Wateringen, The Netherlands).
A few songs were recorded with a simple memo recorder.
All songs have been registered with BUMA/Stemra (the Dutch musical rights organisation).
To this day I still write and produce (and sometimes publish) songs. My latest songs are: Double heart (2020) and Summer with you (2021). Both have yet to be published.
Over the years I continued to perform live (solo), mostly singing with backing-tracks, a few times a year.
The LONG story…
Who is Mario Walzberg?
I was born in Peine, Germany on September 6, 1957. Since my early childhood I have lived in the Netherlands. I have been married twice. My wife Vera is the love of my life, we have been married for 25 years and have one son together. I have 2 daughters from my previous marriage. Vera has one son and 2 daughters of her own that I consider to be mine as well. All our children are grown now, good jobs and living independently, some married with children. We could not be more proud of them all! The two of us have 5 grandchildren who we love unconditionally!
I wear many hats and go by many names. I am a family man, a creative mind, musical soul, tinkerer of mopeds, a loving husband, a patient listener, a story teller, a poet, and of course, a song writer. I have also written a few books describing people’s life stories. The friends I have I keep for life.
From the age of 20 to 49 I worked as a civil servant; as a librarian, manager, and advisor on various interesting projects. I have been living in chronic pain since 1997 from a neck hernia, eventually I had to stop working full time. I discovered that one of the only things to give me true relief is my music, so I made some changes to my lifestyle and in 2006 I started my music career full-time.
What about my musical life?
From 1967-1970 I was a singer in the boys choir “Haags Matrozenkoor.” We performed in several countries in Europe. After leaving this choir, from the age of 15 or 16 I learned to play the guitar because I wanted to write songs myself. At the age of 15 or 16 I left the Haags Matrozenkoor choir. I learned to play the guitar with a dream to write my songs. It wasn’t long before I became the lead singer in my first band ‘Backward Overgear’.
In 1975 I wrote my first song lyrics with Ronald Privé (deceased). He managed the then famous Dutch band ‘Tower’. After that the musical inspiration kept flowing with many songs and lyrics to follow. Most of my songs were written in the English language, but a few were in Dutch. Since then I wrote over a 100 songs, plus even more lyrics and poems. Only about half of these songs have been recorded and published.
I made my first home recordings on a cassette recorder in 1977, but soon upgraded to a quadrophonic Akai tape recorder which could record on 4 tracks separately or simultaneously, but also produced a lot of unwanted noise…
From 1973 to about 1990 or 1991 I was the lead singer in various pop, rock and blues bands who performed mostly on small stages, but occasionally at much larger venues. We performed covers as well as our own original songs. I often joined those bands together with guitar virtuoso Rob Penningnieuwland, who is my cousin. The bands I was a part of were ‘LifeWire’, ‘Backwards Overgear’, ‘Impact’ and several nameless others. I’ve also been the lead singer for a very short while with ‘The Clarks’, a still famous Dutch band.
After almost 20 years of singing in bands I stopped in 1992. That is when I decided that writing and recording music gave me much more satisfaction then performing. I focused entirely on the creative side of music ever since. I do still perform on rare occasions. I simply can’t help the drive to be on stage!
In 1995 I met my (then still-to-be) wife Vera while in the a cappella group ‘4-Out!’ I made arrangements for the songs. We mostly performed on small stages. I accompanied some of the songs with my guitar.
After ‘4-Out!’ ended I started a collaboration in the duo ‘TheMa’ with pianist and friend Theo van Hulst. We only performed a few times live, but we were both very enthusiastic about exploring the possibilities of digital music recording. At the time recording digital music was quite expensive. In those days I also bought my first digital piano, a Yamaha P80. What a relief after our old creaking piano! After a lot of good laughs, a few good drinks, as well as a lot of trial and error we produced our first cd ‘TheMa’ in 2001. All recordings on that cd were covers except for the title song ‘Together’ which I wrote myself. My wife Vera also recorded a few covers for that cd.
The whole recording process took place in my living room which started to look more and more like a small studio. As we got more guitars, keyboards, various types of equipment, microphones, computer hardware what once was a living room seemed to slowly transform. My dreams were finally becoming true right before my very eyes. This digital adventure lead to the foundation of my own small 6 square meter recording studio “StudiOjo” situated in a wooden log cabin in our home garden in 2003. My wife and I were both pleased with the relocation of the ever growing collection of musical equipment from the living room to that cabin.
My last musical achievement with Theo was the production of the CD “After All” (also only covers), released in 2006. Working together with Theo ended that same year, due to him focussing completely on an extensive computer programming study.
In the years 2006-2007 I performed as a singer with pianist Jan de Bloeme, mostly in elderly homes, restaurants and at some small events.
After we moved to a smaller house (in 2007) with a separate studio building, our studio company StudiOjo started getting a lot more business from singers and bands. My wife Vera has always been the studio’s manager, we make a great team. I like to keep my focus on song writing. While we were establishing our new studio space we transformed our garden into a tropical Mexican paradise, with many palm trees to entertain our clients (and ourselves). The musicians that come to record fall in love with our little slice of heaven. We have done many photo shoots and videos right in our backyard. Even a video to a new song by Ayden, well known for her 160 million views YouTube hit with Yellow Claw, ‘Till It Hurts’.
Over the years I wrote and recorded more and more songs. At times I even wrote and recorded songs for other artists sometimes. That’s how I produced the children’s song ‘The Four Seasons’ in 2011, with Ronn van Etten. This song was broadcasted on national TV in the Netherlands. I met this talented composer, poet, singer and multi instrumentalist in 2006 at my last job. Ronn was working there on an advisory assignment. Both being music writers we really hit it off. Ronn became a good friend, together we made various songs in the years that followed.
Since 2009 I have coached female singers. Some have become pretty successful. One of the singers I coached was featured in a national TV broadcast of The Voice Of Holland. I enjoy coaching these talented singers a lot. I even wrote a coaching plan for short and long coaching programs. In 2012 I wrote a syllabus “Singing in the studio” which I also use for coaching purposes. I am currently coaching Michelle Dorlas. She is a talented young singer that was on local radio and TV (Westlandse Omroep Stichting WOS). She has plans to soon be on TV again. You can find her songs on Instagram and the YouTube channel “Michelle Dorlas”, as well as on Spotify. All her original music is specifically written for her by Jaap van Beek and/or myself. She has also sang a few covers.
In 2011 I had a heart attack that required surgery. Fortunately, I recovered well. But since then, our local pharmacy has been very happy with its additional income. Meanwhile in StudiOjo we made a lot more recordings with various soloists, bands, vocalists, instrumentalists, party-groups, and voice-overs. I also continued to write and record my own music as well. Vera continued to manage the studio. She became a professional designer of cd covers for the musicians who recorded in our studio.
Since 2012 I have made many compositions with Jaap van Beek and Vera Kramer. Jaap van Beek is a talented pianist, drummer and songwriter. Vera Kramer is a talented singer and songwriter. In 2013 the three of us founded the Music Writers Guild ‘TrippleNotes’. I also wrote several songs with only Vera Kramer. She sang in Dash Berlin’s first worldwide dance music hits. In 2014 TrippleNotes released the CD ‘In The Here And Now’ with all original music, entirely in English. A year later we released our second cd ‘TrippleNotes NL’ which was entirely in Dutch. A few dozen of our songs can be found on YouTube, as well as a few of my own personal music.
A year later we released our second cd ‘TrippleNotes NL’ which was entirely in Dutch. A few dozen of our songs can be found on YouTube, as well as a few of my own personal music.
In 2019 I uploaded 50 songs onto YouTube, totalling almost 3 hours of music. All original songs by me and/or TrippleNotes or other music friends and all produced at StudiOjo. You can find these songs here on YouTube. Or search YouTube for “Songs Mario Walzberg”.
Several of my original songs can also be found elsewhere on YouTube and on my website www.walzberg.com, while some are also available on streaming platforms like Spotify and SoundCloud.
A few special mentions: In 2018 Ronn van Etten and I wrote the protest song ‘Here we stand’. The song was (also) broadcasted in the USA. It is about how the native population of America (the Indian people) are treated by their government. A poem written by Madison Walzberg (a cousin of mine who lives in the USA) inspired us to write this song.
In 2019 and 2020 I wrote a few dance-songs together with my step-son Jesper Karduks. He’s a talented hard style music producer. Vera Kramer added her beautiful vocals to these songs.
In the same years I wrote a few original songs that are sung by the before mentioned Michelle Dorlas, the young woman I now coach. She has a beautiful voice and is eager to exploit that.
And these are some family-related songs I wrote (some were actually recorded): ‘Your beautiful eyes’ (1981), ‘Lori’ (1985), ‘Emily’ (1988), ‘Walls’ (1995), ‘Together’ (1996), ‘Vera’ (1996), ‘Levy’ (1996).
I try to give love. That illuminates my life path.
I try to respect. That’s not always easy.
I try to understand. I don’t always succeed.
Humour helps me. Collecting beer mats also does (this confession is SO embarrassing! 🙂 I have another small but harmless ‘deviation’: I collect microphones. At the moment I own over 50 microphones ranging from famous brands (like Neumann), to old and/or cheap unknown brands I will probably never use for recordings. But to keep things in balance: I am thinning out my collection of guitars…
Well, that’s me in a nutshell.
Be safe, healthy and happy!
Greetings from
Mario Walzberg
Making Music Moves Me