Biography
Joël Bons is a Dutch modern classical composer. From his bio on BIS Records: "Born in Amsterdam, Joël Bons trained in the modernist composition tradition. His teenage years however were steeped in the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and later Stravinsky. He became acquainted with music from all over the world already in early childhood, through the unique record collection of his parents: boogie woogie, Mexican mariachi, polyrhythmic African percussion, Indian ragas, the irregular time signatures of the Balkans, plucked chitarrones from Venezuela and pipas from China. He learned to play the guitar, formed a band and wrote music for it. When this became so complex that he could not play it any more, it was time to go to the conservatory. There he studied with Robert Heppener, after which he attended summer courses in Siena with Franco Donatoni and in Darmstadt, visited music festivals in Venice, Donaueschingen and Paris and continued his studies in Freiburg with Brian Ferneyhough. In 1980, Bons was co-founder and guitarist of the Nieuw Ensemble." ( https://bis.se/composer/bons-joel/ )
His 2019 release Nomaden, an hourlong work featuring a cellist and an ensemble playing a wide array of instruments from across Asia, won the 2019 Gravemeyer Award for Music Composition.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.