About
Joan Berkhemer (1951) studied the violin in Amsterdam and Tel Aviv and won a multitude of national and international music prizes. He has performed as a soloist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and the orchestras of Dutch broadcasting. He traveled the world with the Klavier Trio Amsterdam, with pianist Klara Würtz and cellist Nadia David, and as primarius (1994-1997) of the Daniel String Quartet. A large number of CDs with chamber music, solo repertoire and violin concerts are to his name and have been very well received by, among others, the NRC, Volkskrant, Washington Post, LA Times and Harris Goldsmith, the influential critic of the New York Times.
In 1986 Berkhemer received a grant from the Ministry of Arts for a study of orchestral conducting in Paris with Leon Barzin and Jean Fournet. Only at the age of 43 did he feel mature enough to conduct. His debut in 1995 at the Italian Opera Amsterdam with ten performances by "Cavalleria Rusticana and" I Pagliacci "was so successful that he received invitations from orchestras from all over the country and beyond. In recent years he has conducted the Limburg Symphony Orchestra, the Dutch Ballet Orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra, the International Music Festival Orchestra Eilat, the Northern Netherlands orchestra and Camerata Bern, among others. Since 2011, he has been the musical director of the "Night of the Violin" at the Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and leads the Brahms Salon, a chamber music series in the unique auditorium of the Reformed Lyceum South in Amsterdam.
Performed worldwide
In addition to playing the violin and conducting, Berkhemer is active as a composer. He wrote a lot of chamber music, songs, an operetta in postmodern style, and music for film and TV and orchestral works. His unique adaptation of Liszt's piano sonata for string orchestra was performed worldwide by Camerata Bern and led to standing ovations in the New York Carnegie Hall, among others.
Berkhemer has a lifelong fascination for the influence of the zeitgeist on making music.
Partly for this reason he founded Mokum Symphony.