In 1951 his boptet was temporarily fully integrated into the orchestra of Ernst van't Hoff, with whom he went on tour in Spain. In 1949 he visited New York with the brothers Jerry and Ack van Rooyen, with whom he continued to play in a group he formed called the "Rob Pronk Boptet." In 1947 he went to Holland with his brother Ruud (a drummer), where he studied economics in Rotterdam and earned a Bachelor's degree, largely to please his parents.īut he then decided to "follow his heart" and attend the Royal Conservatory in The Hague where he studied, trumpet, piano and music theory In his early teens, Rob learned some basic arranging skills from Jerry van Rooyen, whom he had already met when he was on the road in the Dutch East Indies for troop support, but he was largely self-taught and learned through trial and error, much like the early years of one of his arranging idols - Gil Evans.
He received his first piano lessons at the age of eight. As a child he was fascinated by jazz music when he heard Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" on the radio (Ellington also remained his role model later). At the time of his birth in 1925, there was no independent country of Indonesia as the islands which form this archipelago were part of the Dutch East Indies.
0 kommentar(er)
