About Johan Hoogewijs
Johan Hoogewijs (°1957) is a Belgian composer specializing in film and television scores. Hoogewijs composed the scores to many feature films, short movies and documentaries, but he is best known for the immensely popular signature tunes he wrote to successful Belgian and Dutch drama series.
Education
He trained as an assistant director at the RITS School of Arts in Brussels, while simultaneously studying the piano at the Conservatory of Leuven. Since his musical taste and talent have always extended beyond the purely classical, Hoogewijs complemented his classical education with several jazz-workshops at the Conservatory of Liege.
Early work
In the early Eighties, Johan Hoogewijs became a music-editor and sound-designer at the BRT, the Belgian national radio and television. As a composer, Hoogewijs is an autodidact. Although his compositional style is conditioned by the medium he writes for – mainly film and TV since the eighties – his musical style is eclectic, ranging from pop and jazz over electronic avant-garde to classical and contemporary orchestral. While this diversity is appreciated by producers and directors, his music is highly recognizable to an increasingly large audience.
Music for screen
Hoogewijs composed the scores to many feature films, short movies and documentaries, but he is best known for the immensely popular signature tunes he wrote to successful Belgian and Dutch drama series such as LANGS DE KADE, NIET VOOR PUBLICATIE, HETERDAAD, WITSE, RUSSEN and DEADLINE. Hoogewijs also composed the score to more than 300 episodes of these series, and he is generally commended for his aptitude to provide intuitively fitting music to (moving) images. According to Toots Thielemans, who appeared many times as the harmonica soloist in recordings and performances of Hoogewijs’ compositions, “Hoogewijs knows how to set the right tone, I’m no more than the icing on the cake” . In addition to Thielemans, Johan Hoogewijs has collaborated with such reputed ensembles as the Brussels Philharmonic, the Belgische Kamerfilharmonie, I Fiamminghi, the Metropole orkest and the Kon.muziekkapel van de gidsen.
Apart from his television and film scores, Hoogewijs composed for several modern choreographers, and he created hundreds of jingles for the public Belgian broadcasting networks (BRT1TV – BRT2TV – STUDIO BRUSSEL – RADIO1).
Teaching
Johan Hoogewijs is not only a talented composer, but also a passionate instructor.He has been teaching composition workshops for more than 15 years now, mainly at the Dutch art school HKU-KMT in Hilversum, where future composers for film and the performing arts are trained.