Founded in Amsterdam in 2015, Café des Chansons explores the boundaries of French chanson in a unique guise. The ensemble pairs a professional classical string quartet, featuring violinists Giles Francis and Evelien Jaspers, viola player Odile Torenbeek and cellist Sebastiaan van Halsema, with Charlotte Haesen, who trained as a jazz singer.

Our repertoire ranges from the classics to our own original compositions, all of them scored for us by acclaimed arrangers. Against the classic sound of the string quartet, Charlotte creates a distinctive palette tinged with a jazz hue.

Don’t miss out on this intoxicating alchemy!

Known to be active in various musical genres, the singer Charlotte Haesen reaches her listeners with her authentic performance and storytelling, her unmistakable timbre and her incredible musicality. She has won the EuJazz Award, the public price at the 28th Concours de la Chanson Alliance Francaise and received several rewards for her videoclips. Being a uniquely versatile artist, Haesen has performed with different formations at festivals and stages in over 15 countries worldwide.

Born in Amsterdam, she has origins from France, The Netherlands and Rwanda. She grows up at the border between French speaking Belgium and The Nederlands and studies jazz singing at the Maastricht Conservatory and the Amsterdam University of the Arts.

Charlotte currently focuses on three main projects: Café des Chansons, her duo with guitar player Philip Breidenbach: Haesen & Breidenbach and the Limburg Folk Jazz collective GOLEINE.

Odile Torenbeek studied viola at the Hochschule für Musik (Detmold) at Nobuko Imai, surgeon the prestigious Fulbright scholarship gave her the opportunity to obtain a Master of Music at Yale University with prof.Jesse Levine. Odile works in many orchestras both in the US and in Germany. Since 1996 she is a member of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. Chamber music has always been central to her career. She performs in many different formations at home and abroad.