In 1999, while working on a musical production, Jim and Victorine fell in love with each other. Victorine was already perceived as a stage director. Also she had been the singer and front woman of several bands. In her early days, still studying, she earned some money as a jam singer in addition to her scholarship.
In 1999, after working for years as a music teacher, studio musician (and in the spare time as frontman and composer of Jim Rensson and the Crew), Jim had became and worked as a neuropsychologist. Both Victorine and Jim had a second career in progress in science and healthcare. Notably, both Jim and Victorine have become doctors in neurosciences. In artificial intelligence and music science, Jim contributed with a computational model (robot) for musical structure (composition), a melody generator.
After their marriage in 1999, they wrote several theater productions (plays, lyrics and theater direction by Victorine; music composition and directing by Jim). The musicals were frequently performed in hospitals and care centers (the workplaces at the moment of Jim and Vic), art and free festivals, and schools. The three musical productions are about the (delusional) sense of telecommunications (Noble dame Edelmoed), the loneliness of masquerades (The three fools out of the west) and the demise of the imagination in the post-modern society (In search of the door to wonderland). The pieces were performed by Probono, the theater club led by Victorine and performed by amateur and professional musicians.
Besides the three musicals, each about 15 times carried out, they produced some 10 CD's, two with Wilko Rietveld (Expedition Sugerband, and Mixed Feelings). As a producer and / or engineer, Wilko played an important role in all Jim and Victorine work – both stage art and CD's. Mark Baan often played the acoustic (contra) bass, the Hammond organ and the accordion (live and especially the organ on CD's). In live performances guitarist René Schipper accompanied us in the last 10 years, sometimes supplemented by Eelco Arends. Eelco starred already in some of Jim's production from '79 till '84. On drums Ton ten Dam, and Jean Paul Steeghs, among others, accompanied a number of productions. On the website you find several CD productions, and of each a number of songs. One CD with lyrics in Dutch of Victorine and music of Jim is produced for singer Ron Mulder (Romulus and Nuchter), produced, again, by Wilko. Of course, Jim is a remarkable multi-instrumentalist, who plays instruments himself varying from piano to (fretless)bass, from cello to guitar, and from vocals to drums. Jim Rensson is the pseudonym of Jan Willem de Graaf. Victorine is a great singer and writer, also well-known as scientist and writer of the weblog Misscommunicatie.
We hope you enjoy listening.
Jim Rennson & Victorine
