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Bart Verstraeten is a pianist, composer, and teacher. He studied piano, cello, organ, and music theory at the academy in his hometown and subsequently earned master’s degrees in music theory and composition at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory of Antwerp, studying with Luc Van Hove and Wim Henderickx, among others.

At the Ghent Conservatory, he studied piano with Johan Duijck, taking masterclasses with Jonathan Powell, Eliane Rodrigues, and Irene Russo.

Currently, he teaches piano and composition at the Wilrijk academy and performs as a pianist, both as a soloist and in collaboration with baritone Tristan Faes.
As a composer, he gained early recognition with works such as the piano trio Alla Zingarese and the Trio for flute, viola, and guitar, both awarded prizes in 2005. His music is lyrical and rhythmically driven, inspired by late nineteenth-century styles but with a contemporary perspective and a drive for innovation.

Verstraeten sees himself as a bridge-builder between tradition and modernity. His list of works includes piano works—among them, the collection All’Ungherese—as well as choral compositions and chamber music, with an international reputation for his mandolin cycle (Persephone, Demeter, Hades, Le vieux moulin).

His collaboration with conductor Peter Ickx, for whom he composed
several choral works, was particularly fruitful. He also wrote song cycles based on texts by Pablo Neruda, Rutger Kopland, Emile Verhaeren, and Charles Baudelaire.

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Frank Agsteribbe was born in Ghent in 1968. At the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Antwerp, he studied organ with Stanislas Deriemaeker and Joris Verdin from 1986 onwards, and harpsichord with Jos Van Immerseel. He also perfected his skills with Gustav Leonhardt, Davitt Moroney, and Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini.

Besides his intense activity in early music as a continuo player, he is also interested in contemporary music literature: he studied with Herman Sabbe (musicology, Ghent) and at the Antwerp Conservatory, he took courses in music history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with Boudewijn Buckinx, which were approached not only from a historical perspective, but also from a sociological and philosophical perspective. On Buckinx’s advice, he took composition lessons with the American Frederic Rzewski in Liège between 1990 and 1994. It was during this period that Agsteribbe resolutely embraced a postmodern style of writing. Many works were commissioned by organizations such as Broederlijk Delen, Radio 3, Muziektheater Transparant, the Royal Youth Theatre, and the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Antwerp. He became more active as a conductor in 1994, conducting Baroque cantatas, 20th-century repertoire, and his own works. Agsteribbe studied orchestral conducting with David Angus from 2003 onwards and received a Dartington International Summer School Scholarship to participate in the orchestral conducting masterclass with Diego Masson in August 2004. As a harpsichordist/organist, he performs frequently with various orchestras and chamber music ensembles, including Duo Mosaic, The Wondrous Machine, The Great Charm, Il Fondamento, Huelgas Ensemble, Anima Eterna, and La Petite Bande. He gives concerts in various European countries and regularly collaborates on radio and CD recordings. Since 1989, Frank Agsteribbe has been affiliated with the Antwerp Conservatory, where he teaches analysis, AML theory, and chamber music. He also works as a staff member at the Orpheus Institute, as well as a freelance program maker, reviewer, and recording engineer. He has been a board member of the Association for Music Theory in Amsterdam since its founding in 1999, and from 1999 to 2003 was editor of the Journal for Music Theory, also in Amsterdam. In June 2002, he was selected as a participant at the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory in New York, and in 2003 and 2004, he was artistic staff member responsible for the International Orpheus Academy for Music Theory in Ghent. (Matrix)

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Walter Hus (born 1959) is not only a composer, but also a performing pianist and improviser. From the age of ten, he has performed as a concert pianist at home and abroad, and from 1979 onwards as a pianist-improviser.

Hus played with the free jazz formation The Belgian Piano Quartet and was affiliated with Maximalist!, a musical group founded in 1984 that straddled the intersection of pop, rock, classical, and avant-garde. The musician-composers who united in this movement (including Vermeersch, Sleichim, De Mey, and Hus) had met a year earlier during Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s first choreography (Rosas danst Rosas). Their image was strongly influenced by popular culture. Furthermore, interdisciplinarity was characteristic of the collective: a remarkably large percentage of the music Maximalist! composed was performed by the group. wrote, is conceptually connected to other arts such as dance, theater, and film.

The music of Maximalist! seems to be situated primarily within the framework of New Simplicity, which emerged from minimal music. A high degree of repetitiveness, microscopically varied rhythms and dynamics, the simple manipulation and transformation of motifs, a limited harmonic organization, and very limited starting material are its most important characteristics. This generally resulted in music with a high degree of consonance and direct accessibility.

When Maximalist! disbanded in 1989, Hus focused more on classical genres and from then on wrote operas, concertos, symphonic works, and string quartets, which were performed by the Arditti Quartet, among others. Yet, the functional and cross-disciplinary aspect that Hus developed at Maximalist! remains defining for his oeuvre, even after Maximalist!. In addition to music for fashion shows (e.g. Five to Five for Yamamoto (1984)), choreographies (e.g. Muurwerk (1985) and Hic et Nunc (1991) for Roxane Huilmand, and Devouring Muses (1997) for Irène Stamou) and films (The Pillow Book by Greenaway and Suite 16 by Deruddere), several of his compositions were created in collaboration with contemporary poets or playwrights, such as Stefan Hertmans (Francesco’s Paradox), Peter Verhelst (One Day They Appeared), Jan Decorte (Meneer, de zot en tkint) and Jan Lauwers of Needcompany (Orfeo).

In 1996, Walter Hus worked at Limelight in Kortrijk, where the festival and CD label Happy New Ears was founded at that time. Starting in 2000, Hus developed his own “Decap Orchestrion,” an installation with automated organ pipes and percussion instruments that can be controlled by computer. With this instrument he created soundscapes, film scores (e.g. N by Peter Krüger), rock songs, and arrangements of techno hits. Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny used Hus’ “Decap Orchestrion” for his “Orchestration Project.” Although Hus wanted to concentrate mainly on serious composition from 2015 onwards, the jazz pop group Hus & The Next Generation was founded in 2016. (Matrix)

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Kortrijk, 1938; composer, honorary professor of composition at the University College of Ghent, Conservatory Department, and honorary director of the SAMW Peter Benoit in Harelbeke. He initially pursued secondary music studies at the SAMW in Harelbeke; he then continued his studies at the Royal Music Conservatory of Ghent, where he completed the instrumental department with a first prize in piano, an advanced diploma in viola and chamber music; he completed the theoretical department with a first prize in composition. At the start of his career, he was mainly active as a pianist and violist in various chamber music ensembles such as the Flemish Piano Quartet and the Belgian Chamber Orchestra.

From 1970 onwards, he gradually focused more on musical composition. As a composer, he has received several awards, including the Jef Van Hoof Prize (1974), the Tenuto Prize (1974), and the Koopal Prize for his chamber music oeuvre in 1989. In 1999, he was awarded the Visser-Neerlandia Prize for his complete oeuvre.

In pedagogy, he worked for 20 years as a teacher of piano, violin-viola, and ensemble playing at the music academies in Harelbeke and Izegem. From 1977, he was successively director of the SMC in Ostend and from 1979 to 1997 at SAMW in Harelbeke. At the Royal Music Conservatory in Ghent, he taught musical composition and conducted The New Conservatory Ensemble. As a composition teacher, he trained composers such as Lucien Posman, Octave Van Geert, Bernard Baert, Willy Soenen, Rudi Tas, Dirk Blockeel, and Mieke Van Haute. In 1997, he retired to devote himself entirely to composition. Since 1993, he has been a working member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium, Arts Division. In 2019, he was made an honorary member.

In his hometown of Harelbeke, he co-organized the Music Biennials, a biennial music festival that each time highlights an important musical figure from Flanders or Belgium, or a period in Belgian music history. From 2000 to 2012, he was also co-organizer, incentive, and chairman of the International Harmony Composition Competition Harelbeke Music City, which took place biennially, alternating with the Music Biennials.

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Jean-Marie Simonis was born on November 22, 1931.

After completing his classical studies in Greek and Latin, he entered the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, where he won numerous First Prizes, primarily in composition (harmony, counterpoint, fugue), as well as the Gevaert Prize.

A recipient of the Prix de Rome and numerous composition prizes, including the SABAM Prize in 1989 for his entire body of work, he won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1975 and 1978 (the required piece for the second round) for his works “Evocations” and “Notturno,” both for piano.

His “Cantilène” for violin and orchestra was chosen as the required piece for the final round of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1985.

His work “Eclosions” won First Prize at the competition organized by the Belgian Guides Band in 1991 to celebrate the 60th birthday of King Baudouin and the 40th anniversary of his reign.

He is an honorary professor at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (harmony) and

at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel (harmony, counterpoint, and fugue).

Since 1985, he has been a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium. He served as director of the Fine Arts Section in 1997.

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Born in Ath in 1954, Jean-Pierre Deleuze pursued his musical studies at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. In 1980, after winning a first prize in harmony in Jean-Marie Simonis’s class, he turned to the study of composition, which he continued under Marcel Quinet for five years.

He also completed his studies at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, winning a first prize in fugue in Jacques Leduc’s class. His participation in a 1987 workshop on musical analysis led by Olivier Messiaen significantly influenced his aesthetic direction.

His musical language was initially influenced by the late works of Alexander Scriabin, leading him to seek a “harmonically colored” music.

In “Lethamorphos XXI” (based on a poem by Jacques Crickillon, 1996), the use of quarter tones constitutes an initial exploration of microtonal writing. From “Ellipsen” (trio for clarinet, violin and piano, 1998, a work for which the Royal Academy of Belgium awarded him the Irène Fuerison Prize), the use of untempered sounds is more precisely part of the deployment of a mode resulting from the alignment of harmonic sounds. In general, in his latest works, “his writing evolves towards a contemplative imagination, notably in “Espaces Oniriques”” [Christophe Pirenne in “Les musiques nouvelles en Wallonie et à Bruxelles”, ed. Mardaga]. The influence of the spectral aesthetics of Giacinto Scelsi and Tristan Murail and that of oriental conceptions is increasingly marked; This is particularly evident in “Four Haiku, Poetic Evocations for Organ” (premiered in Sapporo in 2004) and “Âlap” (2005), for bansuri, arpeggione, and guitar.

A professor of composition since 1989 and of advanced composition since 2002 at the Royal Conservatory of Mons, he has developed an original pedagogy based on the rational study of the syntax, techniques, and styles of great composers, from Renaissance and Baroque forms to the techniques of various 20th-century composers. He also taught musical analysis at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel during the 2001–2004 academic year. In January 2007, he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium.

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Jacqueline Fontyn was born in Antwerp on December 27, 1930.

Recognizing her early musical talent, her parents entrusted her, shortly after her fifth birthday, to the Russian pedagogue Ignace Bolotine, who gave her daily piano lessons, encouraged her love of improvisation, and of whom she retained wonderful memories.

At 14, she decided to become a composer. After studying music theory with Marcel Quinet, she went to Paris where Max Deutsch introduced her to the world of Schoenberg and initiated her into twelve-tone technique, a language she would use until 1979 – but always in a flexible and very free manner.

In 1956, she also attended Hans Swarowsky’s conducting class at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

From 1963, she taught music theory at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp; in 1970, she was appointed professor of composition at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, a position she held until 1990, while also accepting numerous invitations from universities and conservatories, notably in Europe (Germany, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland), the United States (from New York to San Francisco), the Middle East, Asia (China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan), and New Zealand. Her catalogue of works comprises more than 100 pieces: orchestral, vocal, instrumental, and chamber music, which is performed worldwide and featured in the programs of prestigious orchestras and festivals.

Among the many distinctions bestowed upon her are the Oscar Espla Prize in Spain and the Arthur Honegger Prize from the Fondation de France, the commission of the Violin Concerto required for the finals of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in 1976, and two commissions from the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress in Washington.

A member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium, Jacqueline Fontyn was granted the title of Baroness by the King in 1993 in recognition of her artistic merits.

A taste for rich harmonic textures, a supple rhythm, and a constantly renewed interest in exploring instrumental resources are all elements of an ever-evolving musical language, whose expressive and poetic dimensions appeal to the listener’s sensitivity and curiosity.

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Patrick Dheur is one of the world’s most renowned Belgian pianists. He explores his creativity through the many facets of musical art.

His career as a concert pianist began after completing his studies at the Royal Conservatory of Liège (Belgium), his hometown. He has won numerous international competitions and awards, including first prize at the Szymanowski Competition.

The United States played a significant role in his early career. Selected by Leon Fleisher to attend the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, he spent considerable time there, giving numerous concerts, including a remarkable recital debut at Lincoln Center in New York City.

He is an internationally renowned soloist with numerous orchestras (the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists with Yuri Bashmet, the Belgian National Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestras of Liège, Grenoble, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, and Caraca, the Springfield Symphony, the Norfolk Symphony, the G. Enescu Orchestra of Bucharest, the Wiener Sinfonietta, the Camerata de Lausanne with Pierre Amoyal, and the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, among others).

His discography is growing, and his catalog includes more than twenty CDs.

He is regularly invited to serve as a juror at major international competitions. He is the curator of the Grétry Museum in Liège.

Patrick Dheur is known for his commitment to the musical culture of the city of Liège. His complete piano works by César Franck (3 CDs) are a prime example. He is also dedicated to promoting the masterpieces of Liège composers. Appointed by the As a member of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation of Belgium, and commissioned to oversee the bicentennial commemorations of composer André-Modeste Grétry’s death, he discovered the unpublished and unperformed original manuscript of the opera “L’Officier de la Fortune” (The Officer of Fortune), dating from 1770. He then undertook the study and adaptation, enabling its premiere by the Royal Opera of Liège.

Patrick Dheur is also a talented and published composer and writer.
His output as a composer includes some thirty works (symphonic piano pieces, chamber music, concertos, cantatas, songs, etc.).
Patrick Dheur’s literary work, “La musique au bout des doigts” (Music at Your Fingertips), published by Luc Pire, was recently translated into Chinese to support his Asian tours. His 2016 season took him to Italy, Norway, France, and the United States, culminating in a concert at Carnegie Hall. New York, November 16.

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Né à Liège en 1957, Marc-Henri Cykiert a commencé à jouer la guitare à treize ans, a étudié la musique électronique au Centre de Recherches Musicales de Wallonie avec Frederic Nyst et la musique brésilienne avec José Barrense-Dias.

En 1979, il suit les cours du GIT (Guitar Institute of Technology) à Los Angeles.
De 1980 à 1986, de retour en Belgique, il étudie la composition et l’orchestration avec le compositeur américain Frederic Rzewski et Philippe Boesmans au Conservatoire de Liège.

Il a écrit pour plusieurs musiciens et ensembles, notamment: Michael Guttman, Frederic Rzewski, Suzanna Klintcharova, Steve Houben & Strings, Arriaga String Quartet, Costas Cotsiolis, José Barrense-Dias, Cecile Broche, Luc Tooten, Weber Iago, Camerata Romeu String Orchestra, Katerina Verbovskaya, Bobby Mitchell.

Avec Frederic Rzewski et Michaël Guttman, il a enregistré un CD de ses compositions pour violon et piano ‘Capriccio Hassidico’. Deux autres CD pour piano solo : ‘2 for Peace’ avec Weber Iago, et ‘Katerina Verbovskaya plays Marc-Henri Cykiert’.

Ses compositions ont été jouées en Belgique, France, Hollande, Allemagne, Danemark, U.S.A., Cuba et Chine.

Il parle ici de sa composition “A Marc CHAGALL“