Marcel Singor, born on the Dutch island of Terschelling on April 23rd 1972, is a guitarist, singer, songwriter, and producer. He picked up a guitar for the first time at the age of 10 and won national guitar awards three years later.
His reputation as a very young virtuoso guitar player grew quickly, as did the number of bands in wich his talents were displayed.
Listening to his playing now you can hear the influences of decades of heavy rock leadplaying but there’s a distinct personal style shining through whether it’s in a synth-funk-pop-rock, sympho or Classic Rock context, the typical emotional and expressive bending and vibrato, unexpected choice of notes and unfathomably complicated fast runs fit in wildly different, seemingly opposing, genres.
While being of service as a lead guitar player in all kinds of musical situations, Marcel’s growing interest in singing, songwriting, recording and wide range of musical interests and influences resulted in the forming and fronting of the band Xam, which released an eponymous, and by this time pretty impossible to find, album in 1997. All kinds of session work followed, one of the highlights in this end-of the 90’s period was playing guitar on the album “Where We Stand” by Rich Wyman (1999) and touring behind it. Meanwhile Xam became Maxville, which released a critically acclaimed self titled CD in 2002.
Subsequently there were more collaborations and sessions such as albums by Born, Branko and two solo albums which were both produced by Bas Bron: “Futureproof” (2015) and “Travel Light” (2020, as Singor)
This seemingly unlikely collaboration is one that goes on ‘till this day with plans already in the works to work on another album in the near future. The combination of futuristic, electronic synth wizz Bron and Singor’s guitars, vocals and songwriting skills remains exciting and fresh. Marcel also contributed guitar solo’s to various other projects that Bron produced, most notably “Manologie” from “Manologie” by Donnie and to “Brokstukken in de lucht” from “Moderne Manieren” by De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig.
In 2017 he joined dutch prog legends Kayak as guitarist and occasional singer, recording the albums “Seventeen” (2018), “Live 2019 (2019)” and “Out Of This World” (2022), all of which were promoted by extensive international touring. In 2019 he was asked to perform the lead guitar parts in Ayreon’s “Into the Electric Castle live and Other Tales” shows, resulting in the release of a double live album/blu-ray in 2020, with entered the charts at nr.1. As a result of that, prog legend Fish asked Marcel to be the guitar player on his last worldwide solo tour. After rehearsing in early 2020 they played one show in Aberdeen, the rest of the lengthy tour was canceled when the world closed down in the beginning of march.
During 2020 he started and continued a variety of projects, most of which are nearly finished at this point. These include a brand new solo album, an album as one half of the prog-pop duo Flight Recorder, a rock opera with writer Edwin Ammerlaan and the contributing of all the lead guitar playing on a newly recorded old project by Arjen Lucassen and singer Robert Soeterboek, “Plan Nine- The Long Lost Songs”, with entered the dutch album charts at nr.3.
Live dates are already booked well into 2025 to promote the 70/80’s flavoured classic rock album.