Hello! My name is Ilona.

For a while now, I’m being referred to as “Miss CeltCast” 🙂 undoubtedly due to the fact that I’m married to Alex. And for that very same reason my bio largely parallels with his. We’ve been a couple since 1992 and were long-time friends even before then.

My love for music started with my first music lesson when I was only eight years old. I learned to play the xylophone, flute and saxophone. Currently I’m trying to master guitar and hammered dulcimer. Alex and I have also danced ballroom and latin for years, which let us enjoy music even more intensively.

I’ve always had a thing for all things historical and absolutely love nature. So yay for (open air) museums, historical landscapes and establishments like the Robin Hood ribhouse in Drenthe (NL). Alex has already written about our acquaintance with Omnia way back in 2004 in the open-air Eindhoven Museum. The place where it all started for us!

This moment was so extraordinary… it woke up a huge passion! The year after we visited the first ever Castlefest, followed by Hank and then Keltfest and afterwards… it kinda got out of hand. 🙂 Our children grew up in this special “world” and are also happy to be part of it. For us as a family it has become a “way of life”.

Alex started CeltCast together with Arjan and slowly the initiative grew into a huge voluntary enterprise fed by an urge to share all this wonderful music with as many people as possible. Of the limited free time we have, lots is invested in CeltCast and at festivals we try to take every opportunity to capture as many magical moments as possible. Through the live-streaming option of Facebook we are able to bring more content to the people’s homes than just the radio station. Of course, all this requires more effort and therefore more and more people are getting involved, as am I.

I’m a kind of free-styler, doing various things helping out. I regularly stream the “give away” events, hunt for new music, convert the albums to the streaming format for the server, make sure the right stuff is ready for festivals, go to events if Alex can’t make it but we really want to be present (e.g. Duurstede castle, Datura at Crazy Saturday) and at festivals also do some live-streaming when the simultaneously offered gigs outnumber the stream-team members. Alex is the talkative one of us and I’m more of a doer.

So, with all this going on, the time has come to officially introduce myself as part of the team! I am very proud of what CeltCast has managed to build up next to all daily life’s obligations. And yes, there is still so much potential for growth as our love for music is ever-expending! ♥

Love, Ilona