Biography

Elisa Krijgsman was born on the 17th February of 1969 in Almelo, The Netherlands. He is the youngest of his family, with six sisters and one brother above him. His parents are from Indonesia. Elisa never felt the love for the guitar, for some reason. His father was a good guitar player, but that didn’t motivate him to learn from his dad. But after he heard the great Phil Keaggy on a record, called 'How the West Was One ' he was astonished and blown away, because of his unique non-cliché way of playing and with an even unique sound. Elisa was just 11 years old when he started to copy everything of all the records of Phil Keaggy. Later on, he got interested in the mixture of funk and jazz. He listened a lot to guitar players such as George Benson, Lee Ritenour, Robben Ford, and – his all-time favourite – Larry Carlton. Especially Larry shaped the way of playing which Elisa liked to play. In Hilversum, Elisa was a student of the legendary Wim Overgaauw, but also of Peter Tiehuis and Maarten van de Grinten. In 1995 he graduated with a 9 (or you can say an A+). During his study, he played on several occasions and records. For instance, he played in a live TV show with a live band, which became the fusion/jazz-rock band Seraph. With Seraph, he recorded 4 albums. Elisa also has a big heart for worshipping God. He leads worship at the annual festival named "Opwekking" and produces the Opwekking worship albums. He also wrote many worship songs which are sung in a lot of churches.