Bart Bouckaert - Conductor

Bart Bouckaert studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels where he earned First Prizes for written harmony, counterpoint, fugue, music history and Higher Diplomas for chamber music and percussion. He also became 'Master of Orchestral Conducting'. He holds a doctorate in the arts from the Free University of Brussels. His principal orchestral conducting teachers were Rob Casteels, Lukas Vis (Brussels Conservatory), Peter Eötvös (Eötvös Institute), Mickail Kukuschkin (Peter the Great Academy, St Petersburg), Arturo Tamayo (University of Alcala de Henares) and Peter Gülke.

In 1989 he won second prize at the Orpheus Competition in Antwerp with the OXO percussion trio. In October 2000 Bart Bouckaert became second finalist of the 'Settimo Concorso per Giovani Direttori d'Orchestra', a competition for young opera conductors in Spoleto, Italy.

Bart Bouckaert has conducted various orchestras and ensembles at home and abroad, including The ASKO Ensemble, the Prometheus Ensemble, The Collective, the Odysseia Ensemble, the Opera Orchestra of Spoleto (Italy), the La Monnaie Chamber Orchestra, l'Orchestre Symphonique du Val de Sambre, les Etoiles du Paradou, the Ensembles Contemporary Music and the Symphony Orchestra of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, the National Orchestra of Vilnius (Lithuania), Orquestra Sinfónica da ESMAE (Porto, Portugal), the National Orchestra of Belgium, ... in works by Mozart, Debussy, Holliger, Kurtag, Boulez, Bartok, Prokofiev, Boesmans, Defoort, Swinnen, Van Hecke, Wissels, Neyrinck and many others. On the occasion of the opening of the new Music Instrument Museum in 1999, he conducted the creation of several orchestrations by Franz Liszt, which were thought to have been lost.

At present Bart Bouckaert teaches contemporary music and orchestral conducting at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels.