Mario Walzberg - A heartbeat in music

Biography
Making Music Moves Me Most

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)

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'

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
Today: Still writing songs ...

Click here to listen on YouTube to most of the original songs (over 3 hours!) I wrote, recorded and produced. Updated untill 2019).
(To listen to some more original songs you can search for "Mario Walzberg" inside YouTube, social media and in the main music streaming services).
Click here to read more information about those songs.
Click here to listen to just a few of my original songs and read their lyrics.

Almost all published songs were recorded at and produced by StudiOjo in Wateringen, The Netherlands, except for a few that were recorded with a simple memo recorder.
All songs have been © registered with BUMA/Stemra, the Dutch musical rights organisation.

The LONG story...

Fasten your seat belts!

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. The first love of my life Karin, I met in 1975 and married in 1985. She gave birth to our two lovely daughters Lori (1985) and Emily (1988). I shared my life with Karin for 20 years.
Vera is the second love of my life. We married in 1996. Vera has one son and two daughters of her own that I consider to be mine as well. In 1996 Vera gave birth to our son Levy. Much to our sorrow he died of cancer in 2023.
All of our children are now adults, have good jobs (some even have their own company), are living independently, some married with children. We could not be more proud of them all! The two of us now (in 2023) have 6 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 old 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, including my own.
The friends I have I keep for life. I like to take car rides (how I love my Mercedes!) but I also like to be at home reading a book on my lazy couch. I am a romantic. I like problem solving. I am modest but also like to be in the spotlight. I also enjoy....
Okay, that's enough for being a modest man! :)

From the age of 20 to 49 I worked as a civil servant; as a librarian, people and project manager, and advisor on various interesting projects and work-processes. 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 few things to give me true relief is (making) 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, 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 seperately 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 ended that 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 though. 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!' (Jenny van der Horst, Judith Visser, Vera Karduks-Maas and me). I made arrangements for the cover-songs we performed. I accompanied some of the songs with my acoustic guitar. We mostly performed on small stages.
A lot of people say: Music opens the heart.... A year later I married Vera.

First cd produced!
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.

StudiOjo
After we moved to a smaller house (in 2007) with a 50m2 studio building right in our backyard, 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. Vera also creates the artwork for cd's that are recorded in our studio. I like to keep my focus on song writing and recording.
While we were establishing our new studio space we transformed our garden into a tropical Mexican paradise, with palm trees and terraces to entertain our clients (and ourselves). The musicians that come to record all fall in love with our little slice of heaven. We have done many photo shoots and videos right in our backyard. Even a video in 2019 to a new song by Ayden, well known for her 160 million views YouTube hit with Yellow Claw, 'Till It Hurts'.
Since 2021 we stopped recording complete bands.

Since the Covid years, StudiOjo has completely stopped recording full (live) bands. Bands stayed away then, but unfortunately, that has remained the case ever since. The revenues for this target group have since fallen below the so-called 'break-even' level. We therefore halved the recording space in the studio to survive as a company. Since then, SudiOjo has focused succesfully on vocal coaching, voice recordings, and mixing and mastering of (band-)projects that have already been recorded elsewhere.
Up 'till 2023 StudiOjo recorded about 3000 people!

A very special project in 2023 took place when Miss Martha High (born in the USA), recorded her voice to a jazz cd in StudiOjo on the basis of completely new arrangements to existing jazz songs. The musical genious behind these new arrangements is Michael Edell, a well-known producer in especially the funk music scene in the USA. Miss Martha has been one of the background singers to the world famous James Brown for 32 years. Now, in 2023, she still performs as a soloist regularly on several stages in Europe. Love her and her voice!

Coaching singers
Since 2009 I have coached several female singers. Some have become pretty successful. One of the singers (Angela Wasef) 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. And in 2012 I wrote a syllabus "Singing in the studio" which I also use for coaching purposes.

Since 2020 I am the vocal coach for Michelle Dorlas. She is a very 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 and iTunes. All her original music is specifically written for her by Jaap van Beek and/or myself. Michelle has also published a few covers. Find out how she sounds on her YouTube channel 'Michelle Dorlas'.

In 2011 I had a heart attack that required surgery. Fortunately, I recovered well. That is... since then became a chronical pain patient. Our local pharmacy has been very happy with its additional income.

Meanwhile in StudiOjo we recorded a lot of soloists, bands, vocalists, singer songwriters, instrumentalists, party-groups, and voice-overs. Until 2021 we have welcomed almost 2800 guests/musicians in our studio! You can visit the website www,studiojo.nl for more information and details about StudiOjo.

Over the years I also continued to write and record my own music. My wife Vera continued to manage the studio. She gradually became a professional designer of cd covers for the musicians who recorded in our studio. But she also made other designs, like those for the illustrated life-story books I wrote).

Some musical collaborations...
I've seen a lot of musicians in my studio. With some of them I also made my own songs.
Over the years I wrote and recorded more and more songs. I also 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 broadcast 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.
Click here to find out more about the many original songs, cd's and videos Ronn made.

Since 2012 I have not only made many compositions on my own, but also 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. She sang in Dash Berlin's first worldwide dance music hits, collecting millions of views on YouTube!
In 2013 the three of us founded the music writers guild 'TrippleNotes'. In 2014 TrippleNotes released the cd 'In The Here And Now' with all original music, entirely in English. In 2015 we released our second cd 'TrippleNotes NL' which was entirely in Dutch. TrippleNotes disbanded after that (and their website discontinued). Most of TrippleNotes songs can be found on YouTube and some on SoundCloud. On YouTube you can also find some songs I wrote with just Vera Kramer in the years that followed.

In 2019 I uploaded 50 original songs onto YouTube, totaling almost 3 hours of music. All songs by me and/or TrippleNotes members and/or other music friends. All songs were produced by me at StudiOjo. You can find these songs here on YouTube.

Several of my original (solo) songs can also be found elsewhere on YouTube, SoundCloud and on this website Some songs are also available on streaming platforms like Spotify, iTunes etc.

A few special mentions:
These are some family-related songs I wrote: 'Your beautiful eyes' (1981), 'Lori' (1985), 'Emily' (1988), 'Walls' (1995), 'Together' (1996), 'Vera' (1996), 'Levy' (1996). Only a few of them were actually recorded.

In 2018 Ronn van Etten and I wrote the protest song 'Here we stand'. The song was also broadcast on radio. It is about how the native population of America (the Indian people) were and 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.

Over the years, some of my songs have been broadcast on local radio and TV. And one of my songs even was used on a recurring national broadcast. That was nice for my ego and even earned me a few bucks. It didn't bring me overwhelming wealth or eternal fame :) Fortunately, I am already happy to be happy! In the end that's the most important thing, don't you think so?

I have a small but harmless 'deviation': I collect microphones. At the moment I own over 50 microphones ranging from famous brands (like Neumann, AKG, Sennheiser), to old and/or cheap unknown brands I will probably never use for recordings. But to keep things in balance I'm thinning out my guitar collection.

Recently my wife gave me a cello as a present for our 25th anniversary. A beautiful instrument. It is said that after half an hour of practice every day, you can play reasonably well after a year. We'll see...

Meanwhile... I'm still writing and recording songs every now and then...

I try to give love. That illuminates my life path.

I try to always respect. That's not always easy.

I try to understand. I not always succeed.

Make Music!