Moniek is originally from the Netherlands but she’d been living in New Orleans for some time, playing lots of music and teaching violin. We were on tour with our new school bus and finding a parking spot was never easy with that thing (not even in America), that’s why we arranged a meeting with Moniek in a park where we wanted to have a bbq together and where the school bus had more than enough space. New Orleans is famous for its music and there are truly so many musicians in this city that after a short time even our small table in the park was surrounded by musicians with all kind of instruments – violins everywhere, our cello and someone even rolled in a double bass out of nowhere. We were in paradise!
The next morning it rained heavily and we met Moniek and her friend Martin in a beautiful New Orleans style hippie kitchen and only with a small headache because of the night before we recorded a beautiful string section for “Radiate”. When Moniek offered us a better parking spot (including a free shower!) we were not only the happiest Conductors in New Orleans, no, to put the cgerry on the cake Moniek even performed a few of her own traditional songs for us on her violin!