ROOM ELEVEN

Room Eleven

Room Eleven is a Utrecht band grouped around singer Janne Schra and guitarist Arriën Molema. Their debut album Six White Russians And A Pink Pussycat (2006) features a joyful, jazzy mix of bossa nova, folk, blues, funk and pop.
Full biography

Members

Arriën Molema   gitaar
Maarten Molema   drums
Tony Roe   toetsinstrumenten
Lucas Dols   contrabas
Janne Schra   zang

Former members

Diederik Rijpstra   trompet

Mentioned in the biography of

2001   Janne Schra
2006   Floris
2008   Leine
2010   C-Mon & Kypski
2010   El Pino & The Volunteers
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Biography Room Eleven

Room Eleven is a Utrecht band grouped around singer Janne Schra and guitarist Arriën Molema. Their debut album Six White Russians And A Pink Pussycat (2006) features a joyful, jazzy mix of bossa nova, folk, blues, funk and pop.

2001 - 2003

Singer Janne Schra (Laren, 1981) is looking for kindred spirits to write songs and perform them. She puts up a note at the Utrecht Conservatory, and gets to meet guitarist and composer Arriën Molema. Together they start writing their own material.

2004 - 2005

The Room Eleven line-up is completed by keyboardist Tony Roe, double bassist Lucas Dols and drummer Maarten Molema. The band makes its stage debut at the Amsterdam Uitmarkt festival (a showcase festival at the start of the new cultural season). More gigs are to follow, and on stage they are sometimes joined by jazz trumpeter Diederik Rijpstra. In April the band is the runner-up in the final of AMP's Battle of the Bands at the Amsterdam Melkweg. Room Eleven is discovered by DJ Maestro who puts them into contact with Universal Music. Singer Janne, who studies audiovisual media at the HKU School for the Arts, makes Room Eleven's first music video, for the song One Of These Days.

DJ Maestro

2006

The band's debut album Six White Russians And A Pink Pussycat is released on 9 June. The CD, produced by DJ, producer and composer Floris, is named after a party cocktail. Room Eleven presents the album at the Rotterdam North Sea Jazz Festival on 15 July. Six White Russians… gets favorable reviews. Music magazine Oor calls it 'one of the freshest Dutch debut albums of the year'. The record features an arrangement of George Michael's hit Faith. In October the band receives an Essent Award.

Floris

2007

The debut album reaches the gold disc status in the spring, and is also released in Belgium and Japan. Room Eleven performs at the Groningen Noorderslag and Terschelling Oerol festivals, plus the Liberation Day festivals in Haarlem and Wageningen. Their cover of Meredith Brooks' hit Bitch is used for the advertising campaign 'WE is me' for fashion retailer WE. In the summer the band does a six day tour of Canada, including an appearance at the Montreal Jazz Festival. In October the Room Eleven concerts at the Amsterdam Paradiso and the Utrecht Tivoli are sold out. At the Paradiso the band receives a platinum disc for the album Six White Russians And A Pink Pussycat. In November they start recording their second album with producer Randy Crafton (Dayna Kurtz) in New Jersey. In this period Room Eleven also performs at The Living Room in Manhattan.

2008

In February Room Eleven leaves for Japan to do six shows: four concerts at the Tokyo Cotton Club and two at the Nagoya Blue Note Club. At that moment the band has already sold 12,000 copies of their CD in Japan. The second album, Mmm… Gumbo? (April) features a duet with Dayna Kurtz. The title refers to a dish Kurtz buys for the band during the New Jersey recording sessions. The CD is also released in Germany, where the band tours between 16 and 30 April. Room Eleven has the most watched concert video on Fabchannel.com and for this reason they receive a Fabby Award during the award show for the VNPF / LiveXS Awards on 11 June at the Paradiso. In July the band performs at the 33rd edition of the North Sea Jazz Festival.

2009

On 5 March Room Eleven receives the Zilveren Harp incentive prize at the Buma Harp Gala in Hilversum. On 23 March Room Eleven performs at the Amsterdam Carré theater. A registration of the sold-out concert is released on DVD. The theater show is directed by singer/performer Leoni Jansen.

Leoni Jansen

2010

In January Room Eleven announces it will disband. 'The members were at odds creatively,' according to the press release. Singer Janne Schra starts a solo career, and in October she releases her first album under the name Schradinova.Tony Roe forms the adventurous, audio-visual jazz trio Tin Men and the Telephone, together with Lucas Dols (bass) and Borislav Petrov (drums).

Schradinova Tin Men and the Telephone

Photos Room Eleven

Audio/Video Room Eleven