Summer Evening
concerts 2026: Mart Hillen – The Big Six

Few musicians can make one guitar sound like an entire band. Mart Hillen is one of them: he plays the melody and the bass part, and simultaneously drums on his guitar. Or in the words of radio DJ Giel Beelen: ‘You can't imagine it, but this all happens on one and the same guitar’.

In 2016, he performed his first theater concert accompanied by Leoni Jansen, where he combined his virtuosic guitar playing with personal stories. The combination of his guitar playing style and his arrangements of songs by artists like Queen, U2, and Michael Jackson creates a highly accessible theater concert.

In 2016, Mart won multiple music competitions: Rabo On Stage and the Fingerstyle Academy Awards in Amsterdam, where he played with the world's best acoustic guitarist, Tommy Emmanuel. ’I think I can retire now,“ was his reaction when he heard Mart play.

The Big Six

Where people want to see ‘The Big Five’ on safari, Mart Hillen's life revolves around ‘the big six’. For him, these are the six sacred strings on his guitar with which he can instrumentally play an infinite number of unparalleled songs. 

In his concert The Big Six, he takes you on an expedition to his ‘big six guitarists’, including Tommy Emmanuel and Mark Knopfler, and performs his ‘big six guitar songs’, including Brothers in Arms, Stairway to Heaven, Hotel California, and Toto's Africa.

In The Big Six, Mart translates the emotion and energy of these ‘big six songs’ to his guitar. He makes it growl, cry, and sing. He knows how to make his guitar sound like a band, but sometimes only needs a few notes to capture the essence of a classic.

A concert you can't miss!

This concert is part of a series of Summer Evening Concerts by Cultuurpodium Sint-Jacobskerk.