Elles De Graaf

Elles de Graaf, born 20th september 1974 in Alkmaar, Northern Holland, is undoubtedly one of the leading female vocalists in the current trance scene after collaborating with internationally successful producers like Armin van Buuren, Blank & Jones or Ferry Corsten. Before, Elles was professionally educated on the "Stichting Amsterdamse Balletacademie" by Lucia Marthas, a well-known musical school in the Netherlands where she was trained in show, jazz, streetdance, ballet and acrobatics, among others. Soon she was booked as a dancer for numerous events, concerts, theatre and TV shows, as well as as a model for fashion and commercials. Elles also founded her own dance agency called "Concert Building" with which she arranged shows and choreographies for seven years. Furthermore, all-rounder De Graaf gained her first experiences in the music scene as a backing vocalist for several acts. In 2001, it was finally noticed that Elles' voice is destined for more than just backings, when the young Dutch producer Armin van Buuren needed vocal parts for an instrumental track he had worked on. Raz Nitzan and Adrian Broekhuyse were engaged and got in contact to a new singer that a friend had suggested to them: Elles de Graaf. Armin van Buuren was amazed by her voice and the lines they recorded with her - The Sound Of Goodbye was born. Under the alias Perpetuous Dreamer the single was released in many territories. "The Sound Of Goodbye" entered the British top 30 and the Dutch top 40, for example. Unfortunately, this was the reason for Armin to doubt the Perpetuous Dreamer project because it may be too commercial for his image. Nevertheless, the follow-up Dust.Wav hit the stores one year later and became a big club-hit as well, but couldn't tie up to the massive success of "The Sound Of Goodbye". The cooperation apparently ended here. Elles de Graaf's career as a singer continued. Piet Blank and Jaspa Jones, two well-known producers from Germany who already remixed "The Sound Of Goodbye" and signed it to their label Gang Go Music, were still impressed by Elles' vocal talents that they wanted to feature her on their chillout album "Relax". The result was Flaming June. In the meantime, Nitzan and Broekhuyse started to write songs for Elles' solo project. At the end of 2003, the stunning tune Circles Of Why (Without You) was released with mixes by Greg Murray and Robert Gitelman. For the first time, her full name was printed on a record cover and without a doubt, Elles' star constantly began to rise as all the important trance DJs such as Tiesto, Ferry Corsten and also Armin van Buuren played "Circles Of Why". The story continued in spring 2004 with Blank & Jones - again. They wanted to collaborate with Elles for a second time, but now as a featuring on a major single release! Mind Of The Wonderful, the leading track for their album "Monument", was supported by a great videoclip on the German music channels and directly entered the sales charts at #26. The single was listed eleven more weeks and appeared on almost every important dance compilation. Later, "Mind Of The Wonderful" was signed to labels in Benelux and even the USA. Only a couple of months passed by until the next Elles de Graaf feature came out. This time she teamed up with Jan Gustafsson aka Empyreal Sun on From Dark To Light. Once again the international trance elite powered the energetic production in their DJ sets. Later in 2004, a collaboration with Ferry Corsten, another famous trance-guy from Holland, was announced, but it took almost a year that Show You My World (accompanied by a new remix by Jonas Steur) was finally released. Meanwhile, an earlier production called Gravity appeared although it was never planned to be released officially. It gained slight attention by some DJs anyway. Furthermore, Blank & Jones produced another chillout track for their second "Relax"-album. It was titled Closer To Me. A fourth teamwork with the German duo - a remake of Kosheen's classic Catch - came out in spring 2006 and became yet another top 40 success. A brandnew track with Russian producer Bobina, Lighthouse, is already a massive airplay-hit in Eastern Europe and scheduled for a full release in early 2007... (written by A. Krogull) Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.