Heleen van Haegenborgh

Heleen Van Haegenborgh start­ed her career as a pianist, spe­cialised in con­tem­po­rary music and extend­ed tech­niques. Over the last years, she’s very active as a com­pos­er with com­mis­sions in the fields of con­tem­po­rary music, old music, the­ater, visu­al arts and jazz.

In a review of her lat­est release (Squaring the Circle, 2023) and refer­ring to her record for foghorns and piano (2013), she was described by Clive Bell in The Wire as a com­pos­er whose capac­i­ty for intrigue persists.

In Belgium, she worked close­ly togeth­er and made sev­er­al records with visu­al artists and musi­cians with oth­er back­grounds: jazz, elec­tron­ics, Japanese music, free jazz,…She is seen as a musi­cian who con­nects the cir­cuits of con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal music, free impro and exper­i­men­tal underground.

As a com­pos­er, she com­posed for very dif­fer­ent instru­men­ta­tions: Van Haegenborgh wrote pieces for sev­er­al spe­cif­ic quar­tets: 4 elec­tric gui­tars (Zwerm Electric Guitar Quartet), a quar­tet of peri­od instru­ments (Nordic Affect), a quar­tet of per­cus­sion­ists and elec­tron­ics (Squaring the Circle). Further she wrote solo’s for melod­ic instru­ments of the 16th cen­tu­ry and per­cus­sion (com­pul­sary pieces MA Competition), choir (Musarc), tri­o’s for lute voice and per­cus­sion, trio for oboe d’amore, piano and tenor, ensem­ble, trio for elec­tric gui­tar vio­lin and piano, recorder and elec­tron­ics, etc.

Apart from that, she per­forms her own com­po­si­tions for piano solo with elec­tron­ics or in duo’s with Icelandic harp­si­chordist Gudrun Oskarsdottir, Christian Mendoza (jazz piano), Esther Venrooy (elec­tron­ics), Frederik Leroux (jazz gui­tar) and impro with Tsubasa Hori (Taiko).

Improvisation projects have always been present in her career. She was part of the European Melting Pot in Wroclaw, Istanbul Express in Istanbul with Erdem Helvagioglu, Peking Express in China with Wu Fei, No Choice Toekomstmuziek, ini­ti­at­ed by visu­al artist Dennis Tyfus and so on.

Now she’s work­ing on a new piece for Musarc, a cel­lo piece for Benjamin Glorieux and a large sym­phonie of city sounds in for De Singel and Toneelhuis with the­atre direc­tor Thomas Verstraeten.

Heleen Van Haegenborgh stud­ied com­po­si­tion at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with Peter Swinnen, piano in Ghent with Daan Vandewalle and her music appeared on the fol­low­ing labels: Entr’acte, El Negocito Records, De Werf Records, Logos and Het Balanseer.