Donya was born as the 5th child in a very warm family the 9th of July 1959. During her youth she grew up with jazz music as a natural part of her education. Her father, Joop Martin, was a great pianist and her two brothers played drums and guitar. As a child she had piano lessons and she also sang in a church choir. After graduating as speech therapist she became mother of a twin, Martijn and Lonne, and three years later of Sophie. During raising her kids she happened to run up a great amateur jazz choir, Antwood Affair, which she joined for almost ten years.
When her kids were old enough she started to work again as speech therapist. But in the mean time her love for singing jazz grew more and more and after a while she decided to follow her passion for the music and took song and piano lessons again. Her compassion for the music became increasingly more serious and eventually, in 2004, she started with the Djam in Amsterdam, a school for jazz and contemporary music. During that time she also started her own quartet, ‘ Martins Moods’ with piano, bass and drums, with whom she won the first price of the Novio Pontis Runners Up Award 2007 during the jazz festival East of Eastern in Nijmegen. Since then she never stopped....