Robert Fokkens

Robert Fokkens is a South African composer based in the UK. His music has been performed in many major venues in the UK (including the Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room and Royal Festival Hall), South Africa, Australia, the USA, Japan, and across Europe; and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio, Swedish Radio P2 and various South African radio stations.

Robert's music is published by Composers Edition and Tetractys Publishing, and his debut CD of chamber music – Tracing Lines – is available on the Métier label.

Robert gives regular masterclasses and presentations on his work, both in the UK – most recently at Birmingham Conservatoire, Leeds College of Music and Bristol, York, Birmingham and Cardiff Universities – and in South Africa (at the universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Pretoria and the North-West), where he was also composer-in-residence for both the New Music South Africa Indaba 2008 and 2015, and the South African National Youth Orchestra Courses in 2005 and 2013.

His music has been described by The Times as having its ‘own engaging quirkiness’. It works across established boundaries of genre, style and nationality, using techniques and materials learned from traditional South African and other African musics, alongside influences from a broad array of musical worlds. This creates a music of twisted, disrupted cycles and microtonal inflections that has been described as ‘hilarious’, ‘sad [and] strange’ (The Times) and ‘disturbing’ (The Guardian).

Robert Fokkens, is a speaker at the Diversity and the British String Quarter Symposium, taking place from the 14-16 June 2021. Full details of the programme can be found here:  Diversity and the British String Quartet Symposium.