Ivan Eugene Jansen, born in Aruba in 1955, is a versatile, multi-faceted guitar player, arranger and composer. In 1982, he graduated “cum laude” in Professional of Music Performance from the Berklee College of Music in Boston Massachusetts, where he studied contemporary music, jazz improvisation and specialized in jazz composition and arrangement. He completed his studies in classical guitar at the Academy of Music “Francisco Cristancho” in Bogota, Colombia in 1978 and in 1986 Ivan took master classes from world-renowned Venezuelan classical guitarist Alirio Diaz.

Ivan had the privilege to perform on classical guitar for her majesty Queen Beatrix of Holland and for Prince Willem Alexander of Holland in different ocasions in Aruba and Curaçao.
He has directed orchestras and played in international jazz festivals, solo classical guitar concerts and in duo with Luis Quintero, an internationally renowned virtuoso classical guitarist from Venezuela.
In 1998 Ivan produced the CD’s “Con Alma” and two years later “Con Alma II”, which included several arrangements of Aruban/Antillean composers for the classical guitar among other arrangements of world-renowned Spanish and Latin American composers.
He also published the book “Aruban Folkloric Music for the Classical Guitar” in 1998 (ISBN 99904-950-6-8)

Those three productions were testimony of Ivan’s pioneer work to preserve Aruban and Antillean folklore music on the level of concert music played by a solo guitar. These arrangements played on the guitar demand a high technical ability. This non-traditional way of presenting folklore music on a pure artistic level has enhanced the Aruban/Antillean public’s appreciation for the cultural value and timelessness of its own folkloric music. It has also made it possible for a much larger international audience to appreciate Aruba/Antillean folkloric music in concert.

Ivan’s last production is the Caribbean Jazz CD “Versatility” in 2002, featuring his masterful ability to play a wide spectrum of guitar styles using the jazz guitar, rock guitar, acoustic guitar and guitar synthesizer as his musical voice of expression. This production is a result of his experiments with the fusion of Aruban/Antillean/Caribbean and Latin rhythms with progressive and adventurous jazz improvisations, developing a unique, refined and sophisticated musical concept.