In every day life, Henk Werkhoven is active as a musician, composer, writer, poet and digital artist. He has played various styles of music, from (hard) rock to folk and classical music, with about seventy (professional) bands. He has been a music teacher for more than 18 years, a music columnist, and for a couple of years he was the director of an independant record and distribution company. As a music manager he worked with many musically diverse groups.
In 1982 his first solo album, the instrumental Orphical Positions was released; it was critically acclaimed and given a great deal of airplay around Europe for many years, and in the United States also. In reviews, it was often compared to the music of Mike Oldfield, but also names like Alan Stivell, Jethro Tull or Flairck were mentioned. It was a synthesis of Western and Eastern music, folk music and rock music. Because of its similarities to New Age music, the album in retrospect can be considered one of the first Dutch New Age music productions. Since 2007 it is available again, this time as a CD, at the Dutch Music Archives of Fonos. (Het Nederlands Muziekarchief van Fonos) The music of Orphical Positions was used in a film and for a ballet performance, and a number of tracks on the album have been used in television commercials and several documentaries.
As a member and co-composer of Dream Quest, his first true New Age album, In Search of Avalon was released worldwide in 1997. This title is also available, again at Fonos. In the same year he compiled The Anthology of New Age Music Volume I for the Dutch label Oibibio Sounds, in Amsterdam. The CD was released in Europe and in North America.
Henk Werkhoven is the author and editor of de New Age muziekencyclopedie, which was published in 1997 by Kosmos-Z&k, Utrecht/Antwerpen, in the Netherlands and in Belgium. It was updated and translated in 1998 and published as The International Guide to New Age Music, by Billboard Books, New York, for North America, Canada and Mexico. To this day, the reference book still receives a lot of attention.
Between 1990 and 2000 he was, among other things ,also active as a radio host and producer of several New Age music shows, which he hosted successively for the Dutch national Radio AVRO, Radio Apeldoorn, and Radio Oibibio. For Radio KDUR (Durango, Colorado, U.S.A.) he hosted An Echo of Silence. A so-called syndicated radio program. Creating the possibility of its broadcasting by over 50 other radio stations in the U.S.A.
Since May 2007, Henk Werkhoven is working together with Geert van der Palen on the (hard)rock projcet And GH2 and as from August 2008 he started a renewed collaboration with guitarist and singer/songwriter Robert Nicolai. Under the name: Yarnstone. Mixing Pop, Country, Rock, Folk and New Age Music. For their debut-abum, The Tidings of a Wave, (planning spring 2009)which also will include several guest-musicians.
Henk Werkhoven - Alan's Song From the CD Orphical Positions, Fonos 2007 Videoclip © and made by: Robert Nicolai 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6wYbq5I9eY