Both Menno and Edwin were born and raised in the Netherlands. Menno is married to a Swede and has four children and lives in Huddinge (Stockholm, Sweden). Edwin is also married and also has four children and lives in Woburn (Massachusetts, USA).
Edwin and Menno are both worship leaders in their local communities in Winchester and Skärholmen. They are both dedicated on a volunteer basis to their relatively small but lively churches and try to contribute to a worship culture with songs that fit the local context.
Because of the Covid crisis, they both had more time available to explore cross-border cooperation in creating music together, something that they have been doing in the past when growing up in the Netherlands. At that time they each wrote a couple of songs in Dutch and some in English. Menno has also been writing worship songs in Swedish after he moved to Sweden while being responsible for setting up worship through music in a newly planted church in Skärholmen around 2005.
Even though Edwin moved to the US with his family in 2010, they kept in touch and renewed their songwriting partnership in 2020 starting with a range of messages around unpolished lyrics and melodies that became the basis for their first single, "The Other Side". That became the start of an almost daily flow of communication with now over a dozen songs in progress. Their first EP "Sounds of Grace" will be released on the 27th of August.
While Edwin tends to center on perfecting song lyrics, song harmony arrangements and a large part of the song vocal recording, Menno tends to bring in raw song ideas and focuses on the overall sound and arrangement of the songs. Both Edwin and Menno contribute with acoustic guitar recordings, while Menno adds pianos and synths to the mix. They cooperate with several friends who also sing or play bass, drums, violin, cello and brass instruments.
Menno in his studio, where the magic happens!
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