Willem van Suijdam - Managing partner, Church Organ expert and Sales.

Willem is a concert pianist and organist as well as a conductor. He studied classical organ, conducting and piano at the Royal Conservatory in Zwolle (Netherlands) from 1974 to 1979, after that he studied jazz and theatre organ at the Royal Conservatories of Hilversum and Alkmaar (both Netherlands) between 1979 and 1981 and finally Willem van Suijdam studied Bach interpretation between 1981 and 1986 in Paris (France) under world-renowned organist Jean Guillou. If you want to see Willem play the organ, please go to YouTube.

Willem van Suijdam is also the principal founder of the Liberation Choir in Canada and served as their conductor for 15 years. The Liberation Choir was one of Canada's premier choirs, in its glory days it had over 200 members, performed dozens of sold-out concerts in Europe and Canada as well as the USA, Willem directed 3 sold-out concerts in Hamilton Place, made TV specials every day and performed several concerts with the Guelph Symphony Orchestra, (see picture below) which Willem van Suijdam directed. The choir made 4 very successful European tours. Please also see here.

In 1995 Willem had the honor to be chosen for the Arts Acclaim Award, citizen of the year in Canada where he resided at the time. After immigrating to Canada from the Netherlands in 1986, Willem founded his first organ store in 1989. He advises organ committees, sells pipe organs as well as digital organs and with his combination of business and knowing quality and value, he opened up Pianohouse Burlington Inc. which became Canada's largest piano store, and he owned it until 2009. It flourished under his skillful leadership. He also imports pipe organs and Content digital organs and is the backbone of ManilaPianos Inc. specializing in the sales of Steinway & Sons, Yamaha, Kawai, Young Chang and Pearl River pianos and grand pianos and has a complete remanufacturing shop where Steinway & Sons, Bosendorfer, Bechstein and other fine pianos are rebuilt from the ground up. Willem is now establishing, together with Nelson, Africa's largest piano store selling high-quality used pianos and church organs.

Willem was also chosen to be one of three judges in the Chinese Organ Competition 2014, an honor not bestowed to many, together with Francois Espinasse, organist in Paris, France.

Willem taught a masterclass in registration and interpretation of classical and sacred music put on for the 12 finalists of the competition that started with more than 200 participants. You can read more on this on Google. See the picture of Willem lecturing, the masterclass went on for some 6 hours and mainly focussed on the teaching of registrations to be used on a real pipe organ. He recently moved to Nairobi to partner with Nelson to expand services and sales possibilities.

You can reach Willem at wvs1616@hotmail.com.