Ralf J. J. Mackenbach (born 4 October 1995) is a Dutch plasma physicist, artist and former child singer, best known for winning the

Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2009 The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2009 was the seventh edition of the annual Junior Eurovision Song Contest and took place in Kyiv, Ukraine. It was scheduled for 21 November 2009. 13 countries were confirmed by the European Broadcasting Union ( ...

with the song "

Click Clack Click, Klick and Klik may refer to: Airlines * Click Airways, a UAE airline * Clickair, a Spanish airline * MexicanaClick, a Mexican airline Art, entertainment, and media Fictional characters * Klick (fictional species), an alien race in the g ...

". He is the first and so far only Dutch winner of the contest.

Biography

Early life

Mackenbach was born in Best,

North Brabant North Brabant ( nl, Noord-Brabant ; Brabantian: ; ), also unofficially called Brabant, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to the w ...

and has an older brother Rick (born 1993). As a child, he starred in the musicals ''

Tarzan Tarzan (John Clayton II, Viscount Greystoke) is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungle by the Mangani great apes; he later experiences civilization, only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adv ...

'' and ''

Beauty and the Beast ''Beauty and the Beast'' (french: La Belle et la Bête) is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in ''La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins'' (''The Young American and Marine ...

''. He attended Amsterdam's dancing academy Lucia Marthas, and studied acting at Centrum voor de Kunsten Eindhoven (CKE) in Eindhoven.

Musical career

In 2009, at the age of thirteen, Mackenbach won the 2009 edition of ''

Junior Songfestival (, ) is a Dutch televised music competition for children, held annually since 2003. It is the children's version of the . The winner of the contest goes on to represent the Netherlands in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest (), an international ...

'' with the song "

". As a result, he represented the Netherlands in the

, and went on to win the competition with 121 points. "Click Clack" peaked at number 7 in the

Dutch Single Top 100 The Dutch Single Top 100 or Single Top 100 is a Dutch chart, based on official physical single sales, legal downloads and since July 2013 streaming and composed by Dutch Charts. It is one of the three official charts, the other two being the Du ...

. Subsequently, he appeared in the , and contests as part of an interval act. Mackenbach's debut album ''Ralf'' achieved a top 10 spot in the Dutch album charts and entered the Flemish album charts at number 59. In March 2011, it achieved gold status with over 25,000 sales. In 2011, he participated in the show . He was a judge on the 2011 edition of the Dutch talent show '' My Name is…''. In 2019, he appeared as a judge on the Dutch adaptation of '' All Together Now''.

Academic career

After graduating secondary school with a VWO certificate, Mackenbach studied at the

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), abbr. TU/e, is a public technical university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its BSc an ...

. In 2019, he finished a master's degree in

nuclear fusion Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles ( neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manife ...

, for which he wrote the dissertation ''Numerical Modelling of Mode Penetration in Cylindrical Geometries using M3D-C1''.

Discography

Albums

* ''Ralf'' (2010) * ''Moving On'' (2011) * ''Seventeen'' (2012)

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mackenbach, Ralf 1995 births Living people 21st-century Dutch physicists 21st-century Dutch singers Dutch child singers Dutch male dancers Dutch male musical theatre actors Dutch nuclear physicists Dutch people of Austrian descent Dutch people of German descent Dutch pop singers Dutch singer-songwriters Eindhoven University of Technology alumni Academic staff of the Eindhoven University of Technology Junior Eurovision Song Contest entrants for the Netherlands Junior Eurovision Song Contest winners People from Best, Netherlands Tap dancers