Biografie

Loek Dikker was born in Amsterdam and has been active as a composer and pianist. With his jazz group The Waterland Ensemble, he has been touring Europe extensively since the sixties for club dates and jazz festivals, including U.S.A. and Canada coast-to-coast tours on several occasions.

As a composer he has contributed to film - and stage productions such as ballet, modern dance, musical theatre, and above all to the symphony orchestra.

It was in 1981 that he wrote his first film score. This was the immediate start of a successful career as a composer for the cinema. He was awarded the Silver Desk for his music to The Fourth Man, directed by Paul Verhoeven in 1983, and achieved international recognition soon after.

Since, he has been writing -mostly symphonic- music for 60 films in several European countries, and for Hollywood productions. The producers involved include: Joel Schumacher, Mark Levinson, Aaron Spelling, Frank Mancuso Jr. and Eric Fellner.

He has been working with directors such as Paul Verhoeven, Matthew Chapman, James Dearden on Pascali’s Island (also scriptwriter of “Fatal Attraction”), Eric Red, Richard Blank and Margarethe von Trotta (Rosenstrasse) on films featuring Johnny Depp, Ben Kingsley, Robert Redford, Eric Roberts, Beverley d’Angelo, Alicia Silverstone, Jeroen Krabbé, Maria Schrader, John Hurt and Helen Mirren.

Loek moved to California 1994 to work in Hollywood. When he returned to Europe a few years later, he split his his professional activities between Amsterdam, Los Angeles and Berlin.

In 1999 he wrote the music for Peter Delpeut’s found footage-with-live-symphony” project Diva Dolorosa, coproduced by the Eye Institute and the Holland Festival, which was shown in Amsterdam, Ghent and Rome.

In 2002 he met director Margaretha von Trotta and composed the music for her successful film Rosenstrasse, which was premiered in competition at the prestigious Filmfestival of Venice 2003. Also in the competition of the Venetian Filmfestival but a year earlier, Loek composed the music for producer Laurens Straub’s movie Führer Ex.

In 2004 Loek received the Award Best European Filmmusic for his score for Rosenstrasse, the Italian “Premio Cinemusica” at the Ravello Festival. In the same year Diva Dolorosa was performed in Rome at Renzo Piano's Auditorio in the presence of her majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, as a celebration of 100 year mutual cultural relations between Italy and Holland. 

A bit later, in 2007 Loek adapted early piano works of Ludwig von Beethoven for the symphony orchestra, for Michael Meert’s Der junge Beethoven commissioned by German broadcaster WDR in cooperation with the Beethoven House in Bonn. Presently he is preparing the (film-)music for  the same director in a feature film on Beethoven's life in Vienna. 

With his score for the film Wolfsbergen by Nanouk Leopold  –which was  premiered at the Berlinale in 2007- Loek continued his contribution to Dutch cinema.

Loek keeps on playing piano jazz concerts with his Waterland Ensemble -like the famous yearly Saint Nicholas concert at the Bimhuis Amsterdam- composing both film music and jazz music. He also developed a career over the last years writing chamber music and works for large orchestra to be performed at the concert stage.

October 2009 his cooperation with writer Allard Schröder -resulting in a work for two soprano’s and orchestra Nazomer (Indian Summer), was premiered at the Muziekgebouw Amsterdam.

As a founder and chairman of Muziekinstituut MultiMedia (MiMM), he developed and produced various orchestral film music events in cooperation with the International Film Festival Rotterdam, in which as much as 17 composers were working together on a single project. In 2013 Loek programmed and produced for MiMM the famous "Museum Night" at the Eye film Institute in Amsterdam with live projects, some with symphony orchestra. In the same year the French cultural heritage movie "L'inhumaine" (1924) was newly underscored -with 15 cooperating composers-  commissioned for the AAA-series of the Concertgebouw Orchestra.