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Johnny Rahaket
"To me it's a challenge to touch people with their neighbour's music,
a neighbour they would rather not want to live next-door to!"
Screenstills & Photomontage Wim Reijnen
Johnny Rahaket studied at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik at Cologne with professor Heinz Schkommodau. Next he became a steel bender at Groesbeek. After a year and a half he climbed down from the scaffold and hitchhiked from Nijmegen to Cameroon taking along his violin:
"Indelible musical impressions I gained more or less by chance: attending a service somewhere in the jungle of Cameroon, with musicians in the streets of In Salah, visiting singing relatives on the Kei Islands and singing schoolkids in Kirghizistan, with Czech lumberjacks and Groesbekian construction workers, at Basque village feasts and sitting at a Muscovite kitchen table.
After my return I took up practising the violin, now at the Academy of Music in Utrecht with the Russian masterviolinist Philip Hirschhorn, who especially imparted modesty to me. I obtained the teaching certificate and was
invited to continue with the study to obtain the executing certificate as well. But rather, together with a friend of mine I went sailing on the ocean, where the dolphins disappeared at once if I played the violin for them.
A company which influenced my musical course too, was the Riciotti Ensemble, of which I've been concertmaster for a period of two years. We've been on tour to the Soviet Union, Poland and Spain. Thereafter I played for four years at the International Dance Theatre, with which I've been on the road to, among others, India, China, the United States and the Dutch Antilles. With a tremendous lot of pleasure I made music for a number of productions of the Motion Theatre BEWTH at Amsterdam."
Besides the primus inter pares and violinist of ®chestra Johnny Rahaket is conductor of both the Colourful City Choir and the KION Choir and artistic director of Circus Colourful City.