Steven Verhaert - Musical Director
Steven started his musical education at the music academy in Aartselaar (BE) and continued it at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels where he obtained first prizes in solfège, trumpet (Manu Mellaerts) and chamber music. With the "Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet", he also won the Higher Diploma in Chamber Music.
After his studies in Brussels, he continued his studies at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe (D) in the class of Prof. Reinhold Friedrich. Steven has been a trumpet player with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra since 1995. He teaches trumpet and Hafabra conducting at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp and is Visiting Professor of Chamber Music at the Musikhochschule in Frankfurt.
He is regularly in demand as a conductor with Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the brass ensemble of the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt (hr-brass), the Hermes Ensemble, I Solisti del Vento, Belgian Brass and the Sinfonisches Blasorchester from Mainz.
In August 2014, he made his conducting debut at the Lucerne Festival with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra Brass Ensemble in a programme featuring almost exclusively his own arrangements. As an arranger, many ensembles and orchestras (World Brass, hr-brass, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Brass of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra Brass Ensemble, Belgian Brass, I Solisti del Vento, Harmonieorkest "Vooruit" Harelbeke) call on him for all kinds of arrangements and transcriptions. Most of his arrangements have been published by Hal Leonard and Golden River Music.
With the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées and the Collegium Vocale Gent, he is also very active in the field of historical performance practice.
He has also worked with conductors such as C.Abbado, M.Tilson-Thomas, D.Harding, H.Wolf, P.Boulez, P.Herreweghe and others.