Suzan Veneman
Biography Suzan Veneman
Suzan Veneman
Jazz trumpet player Suzan Veneman is quickly established her place on the scene, capturing audiences with her adventurous and soulful sound. After finishing her studies in the USA she has been fulfilling her role as successful musician and promising composer and arranger. Comfortable with many genres in of modern music, she can be seen playing with a wide variety of bands, including the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, Beets New Jazz Orchestra, Zack Lober’s NO FILL3R and her own ambitious projects ‘Zinder’ and the 'Suzan Veneman Sextet'.
Her early achievements include being finalist at the Prinses Christina Concours (NL, 2010) and partaking in the exclusive Jazz Rising Stars Program at Ravinia, IL (USA, 2013) lead by former jazz giant David Baker.
Suzan has also excelled as a skilled composer and arranger, being a finalist at the ASMAC Big Band composers and arrangers competition in LA (USA, 2014) and awardee Jazz Comp Graz Big Band Composers Competition in Austria in 2021. She was also invited as a guest composer at NDR big band in Hamburg, as part of their ‘Arrangement Podium’ in 2021 and was chosen as 1 of 10 composers to present her new work at ‘Week van de Jazz’ in 2022.
Veneman founded the Suzan Veneman Sextet in 2019, starting out as a bandleader, further discovering her voice as a composer and arranger. Her debut album ‘Migrations of the Mind’ came out in the Spring of 2022, after which the band played a beautiful release-tour on several leading jazz festivals and stages throughout the Netherlands.
She is currently in the process of releasing a new album with her newest project ‘Zinder’, a sextet consisting of 4 trumpets, upright bass and drums. Her idea was to combine the dynamic force of 4 trumpets with the freedom of a chord-less trio. Within this special set-up, Veneman playfully explores different roles the trumpet takes on within the jazz idiom, using big band-like tuttis, desolate melodies, free improvisation and warm harmonic interplay.
Suzan studied with Kurt Weiss, Alex Sipiagin, Joe Magnarelli, Jim Rotondi, Victor Lewis and Conrad Herwig, among others.
