Simone van der Weerden was born in 1990 in Someren in the south of Holland. There she grew up in a very music-minded family and started playing the accordion at the age of 7. During her whole youth she had accordion lessons and dance lessons at the Academy for Music and Dance.

It was clear since her early years that music is her passion. When she decided to study at the conservatory at the age of 17, it did not came as a surprise for anyone.

In 2007 she started to study classical accordíon at the Fontys Conservarory in Tilburg with Ludo Mariën. She attended masterclasses of Viacheslav Semionov, Mika Vayrinen and Claudio Jacomucci and others. During her study she was not only focused on the classical repertoire, but also on the Russian, Balkan and especially South-American music. 

Because of this her love for the tango was fired up even more. At the age of 18 she started also to play the bandoneón. With some help of funds she was able to buy an instrument and started having lessons with Ville Hiltula and Carel Kraayenhof.

Here she follows lessons with Victor Hugo Villena and Leo Vervelde. During this education she has formed an Argentinian tango quintet together with 4 fellow tango students. The quintet is called ‘LocosLindos’. LocosLindos is coached by different teachers from the department, like Gustavo Beytelmann, Micha Molthoff and Victor Villena. And also Carel Kraayenhof. Together with LocosLindos she performed already a lot in Holland, Belgium and France. LocosLindos also won the 3th prize in the MusicMatters Award Finale 2011. Besides LocosLindos Simone also plays in the 2 big orchestras of the department, 'TOC' and 'Gran Orquesta Típica OTRA'. Simone is also active as a soloist in different harmony orchestra's and she is an accordion teacher at the 'MuziekPakhuis 049'. At the moment she is also composing for the quintet.

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