Joel Hoekstra

Renowned for his boundary-pushing approach to the guitar and his kinship with six-string masters such as Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Nuno Bettencourt, Chicago-born, New York City-based Joel Hoekstra ranks among the most tireless performers traversing the hard-rock scene. In constant demand as a session player, he has also toured extensively with Night Ranger, Whitesnake, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra while taking the Broadway stage in the hit musical Rock of Ages, reprising a brief role in its feature-film adaptation. His first instrumental solo outing, Undefined, arrived in 2000; two years later came the jazz-fusion release The Moon Is Falling, followed in 2007 by the artful 13 Acoustic Songs. The largely instrumental, melodic hard-rock collective Joel Hoekstra’s 13 was assembled in 2014, drawing on an all-star lineup of rock stalwarts that included Jeff Scott Soto on vocals, Russell Allen on vocals, Tony Franklin on bass, Vinny Appice on drums, and Derek Sherinian on keyboards. Frontiers Records issued the ensemble’s first album, Dying to Live, the next year.