DCV 423 – 24 Capriccios for Violin Solo

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.

Joey Roukens was born in Schiedam, the Netherlands, in 1982. He studied composition with Klaas de Vries at the Rotterdam Conservatory and psychology at Leiden University. Roukens also studied piano privately with Ton Hartsuiker.

Artistic vision Sander Germanus has a unique vision of music. Hallucinatory and disorienting harmonic progressions play an essential role in his world of sound. The expectations of the listener can be optimally put to the test by the dizzy fluctuations of his ‘dualistic tuning’ that he has developed.

Eric Verbugt was born in 1966. He studied composition at the Maastricht Conservatory with Henri Delnooz and Robert HP Platz. Centre Acanthes gave him a scholarship to attend masterclasses from Luigi Nono and Elliot Carter. After his study Verbugt received commissions from the Fonds voor de Scheppende Toonkunst, the Aeolian Trio, Provincie Limburg, Lantaren/Venster and the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst. His Bilder (aus dem Novecento) got an honorable mentioning in the International Gaudeamusweek. He was artist-in-residence at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg.

The majority of Vanessa Lann's compositions include aspects of ritual, ceremony or contemplation. She is interested in breaking with the conventional concert-hall approach to the performance and programming of music, and she frequently experiments with alternative ways of sharing sound, other media and time with audiences, often hoping to blur the boundary between art and daily experience. In her music Lann uses the repetition of recognizable figures, as well as layers of structures based on number ratios, to create a world in which each subtle element has a distinct meaning.

Chiel Meijering was born in Amsterdam. He studied composition with Ton de Leeuw, percussion under Jan Labordus and Jan Pustjens and piano at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music. He is one of the most performed Dutch composers. Meijering has an enormous output of works. He has written over 900 compositions so far, for almost any instrumentation imaginable. A main focus has been on various small ensemble settings.

Guus Janssen (1951) studied piano and composition at the Sweelinck Academy of Music in Amsterdam. His music is difficult to categorize. It can be a composed improvisation (Brake for pianosolo) or an improvised composition (parts from his Violin Concerto or his opera Noach).

"Creativity is an unconscious act of insanity, in a burst of which the truth is born. No matter how beautiful or disgusting it may seem to people far from madness, its value is beyond doubt, both for the author and for those able to sense its invisible beauty. After all, gratitude for endless trials and suffering brings joy and blissful emptiness… Being shocked by music is about pain turning into beauty and getting under your skin, taking away your breath; about everything stopping to move. I want to be scratched inside by sound and experience the fleeting, invisible beauty." - Maxim Shalygin

Education Michael has a degree in English Literature from the State University of New York. Despite having no formal music education, he has an active international career in several aspects of the music business.

Celia Swart (1994, NL) is a new music composer, saxophone player and visual artist. Growing up playing saxophone and piano, she found her love for composing.