Jan Rokyta ml.

Jan Rokyta was born in Ostrava (Czech Republic). He studied to play the cimbalom with Ludmila Dadáková at the Conservatory of Music in Bratislava (Slovakia) and the recorder with Walter van Hauwe and Paul Leenhouts at the Sweelinck Academy of Music in Amsterdam. He has played with, among others, the cimbalom orchestra Technik in Ostrava (Czech Republic), which was founded in 1958 by his father, Jan Rokyta sr. and, later, when he came to Holland he joined the ASKO/Schönberg Ensemble, The Dutch Wind instruments ensemble, The New Ensemble, Royal Concertgebouw orchestra and The Chamber Philharmonic orchestra of the Dutch Radio. Jan Rokyta played the first performances of contemporary pieces for cimbalom by Florian Magnus Maier, Marc André, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Jonathan Berger and he also reguraly performes the chamber music by Győrgy Kurtág. From 1995 to 2002 Jan was an all-round multi-instrumental member of The International Dance Theatre Orchestra Amsterdam. There he gathered a lot of expertise in the field of world- and folk music. His multi-instrumental experience brought him to his co-operation with the baroque ensembles Holland Baroque Society (The Netherlands) and Solamente Naturali (Slovakia). Next to that he forms a cimbalom/panflute duo with his wife Liselotte Rokyta, performing besides Romanian traditional music contemporary pieces and transcriptions of the compositions by Béla Bartók and Claude Debussy.
In the front of his music activities, Jan Rokyta is a qualified “Vinologist of the Dutch Wine Academy”. In 2009 he completed the “Diploma Course” of Wine and Spirit Education Trust and in the same year he won the Dutch wine tasting competition “Prix Pommery”. Since 2010 is Jan “Certified Educator of WSET” and “Weinakademiker”. He teaches since 2012 on the Prague Wine Academy.