Joey Roukens - Composer

General
Joey Roukens was born in Schiedam, the Netherlands, in 1982.

Education
Roukens studied composition at the Rotterdam Conservatory and psychology at Leiden University. Roukens also studied piano privately with Ton Hartsuiker.

Compositions
His output includes orchestral works, ensemble works, chamber music, solo instrumental works and an opera. In his music Roukens strives to move away from modernist ways of thinking in search for a more eclectic and more direct idiom, without reverting to some naive neo-style. In doing so, the composer doesn’t shy away from the use of triads, tonal or diatonic harmonies, a regular rhythmic pulse, directness of expression, simplicity, references to popular music and vernacular culture, ‘stealing’ from the musical heritage of the past and the odd trivial turn.

Consequently, in most of his works, Roukens seeks to organically integrate elements from highly diverse influences and aesthetics – including the orchestral colors of early Stravinsky, the late-Romanticism of Mahler and Sibelius, the ethereal qualities of Ravel and Takemitsu, the pulsating rhythms of American composers like Reich and Adams, but also certain kinds of pop music and jazz. Not because Roukens cannot choose, but because he feels they are all part of the musical air he breathes. For a long time, Roukens was also active in pop music.

His works have been performed by major ensembles and soloists in the Netherlands and abroad, such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, ASKO|Schönberg, Britten Sinfonia, Tokyo Sinfonietta, the Nieuw Ensemble, the Rubens Quartet, the Storing Trio, the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Lavinia Meijer, Ralph van Raat and Colin Currie.

Career
Joey Roukens first came to the public´s attention while still in his late teens, when he wrote his first orchestral works ‘Titaantjes‘ (1999) and ‘Symphony‘ (2000), both of which were performed by the Nederlands Philharmonisch Orkest in 2001. During his studies, he wrote pieces using a more modernist aesthetic which Roukens would later depart from.

After his graduation from the Rotterdam Conservatory, his compositions gradually became more tonal and more expressively direct. During the Dutch Music Days in 2007 the orchestral work ‘365‘ was premiered, one of the first works in which Roukens did not shy away from the use of unabashedly tonal harmonies and kitsch elements, which subsequently caused a bit of controversy. Roukens then wrote the three-movement string quartet ‘Earnest and Game‘ in 2007 for the Rubens Quartet – the beginning of a long-standing collaboration with this quartet.

During the next few years, Roukens further worked on developing himself as an orchestral composer, creating a number of colorful orchestral works such as ‘From funeral to funfair (and back…)‘, written for the Nederlands Studenten Orkest in 2008, the playful ‘Alto Saxophone Concerto‘ written for the Noord Nederlands Orkest with Arno Bornkamp as the soloist, and the atmospheric ‘Out of Control‘ (2010), premiered by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by David Robertson.

Roukens also wrote a number of vibrant pieces for chamber ensemble, including the energetic ‘Fast Movement and Epilogue‘ (2009), written for the Japanese ensemble Tokyo Sinfonietta, who premiered it with great success in Tokyo, the cartoon-esque chamber concerto Scenes from an old memory box (2010), written for ASKO|Schönberg, and a ‘Percussion Concerto‘ (2011) in four movements, written for the celebrated British percussionist Colin Currie. After the premiere, Currie called the work “one of the five best percussion concertos ever written”.

His next string quartet ‘Visions at Sea‘ (2011) was written on a commission from the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. A musical depiction of a surreal sea voyage, it was again premiered by and written for the Rubens Quartet, who gave numerous performances of the piece. Roukens’ kaleidoscopic ‘Concerto Hypnagogique‘, for piano and orchestra with Ralph van Raat as the soloist, was performed on May 12th 2012 during the NTR ZaterdagMatinee concert series at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

In 2013, ‘Mr. Finney de Opera‘, Roukens’ opera for both children and adults based on a children’s book by Laurentien van Oranje and Sieb Posthuma about a fish-like creature going on a journey around the world, was premiered in the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague. After its premiere the opera went on to a successful tour throughout the Netherlands.

Roukens’ recent works include ‘Rising Phenix’ (2014), a large scale work for mixed chorus and orchestra written to celebrate the re-opening of the revovated TivoliVredenburg concert hall in Utrecht, a two-movement violin concerto ‘Roads to Everywhere’ (2015) written for violinist Joseph Puglia and ASKO|Schönberg, a 25-minute symphony in one movement called ‘Morphic Waves’ (2015) which has received several successful international performances, ‘Boundless’ (2016), a vibrant homage to Leonard Bernstein (on the centennial of his birth) for string orchestra, harp, keyboards and percussion, which was commissioned and premiered by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and subsequently performed by the New York Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert, and a double piano concerto called ‘In Unison’ (2017), written for the celebrated young Dutch piano duo Lucas & Arthur Jussen, a piece which was met with great public and critical acclaim.