Leo, born 1951 in Amsterdam, Holland, started playing the guitar at the age of 10, taking lessons for half a year, got bored with it and put the instrument in a closet. But when the Beatles, Kinks, Byrds etc started the pop music it was quickly taken out of that same closet. In the late 1960s musical taste twisted towards the Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the white blues and he picked up the electric guitar. Passing to the black Chicago blues he discovered one day the acoustic blues: Robert Johnson was a strike of lightning: that was it ! And the next years were spent with learning by ear from the records the old blues from the 20’s and 30’s. He started to fingerpick. An instrumental guitar record by Stefan Grossman had a strong influence on Leo; the discovery of Ragtime music. Originally composed for piano it could perfectly be adapted on the guitar, using the fingerpicking style, learned from the old bluesmen. The early 1970s were filled with making arrangements from piano rags to the guitar. In the same period he started preforming in Holland; cafe’s, youth centers and folk clubs.

In 1974, Stefan Grossman made him an offer he couldn’t refuse; to record some of the guitar rags on a just started American label “Kicking Mule Records”. The first rags appeared on a sampler record “Contemporary Ragtime Guitar” with other guitarists from USA.

From 1974-1978 he followed a classical guitar education at the Conservatory in Utrecht (mind : till so far Leo was an autodidact !), but quit with dignity before getting kicked out. The release of his first solo lp “Rags to Riches” came out in 1975, and started a period of touring in Belgium, France, England and Italy, often together with other guitarists of the KM label: Stefan Grossman, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Davy Graham, Marcel Dadi, Duck Baker, John James and others. Slowly other influences slipped in; the classical piano music of Debussy and Ravel (the so called musical “Impressionism”), he started to transcribe their- as well as others – music on the guitar, without the aim of being a “classical” guitarist, using steel strings instead of nylon, and using his Gibson guitar.

Leo moved to Antwerp, Belgium, in 1988, as the musical leader of a theatre group, the “Internationale Nieuwe Scene.” These days he is playing solo again.