Heleen van Haegenborgh BE

Heleen Van Haegenborgh is a composer who start­ed her career as a pianist spe­cialising in con­tem­po­rary music and extend­ed tech­niques. Her work is highly interdisciplinary and often animated by collaboration, crossing a broad range of genres connecting contemporary and old music, jazz, visual arts, free improvisation, dance and theatre, and experimental underground. Van Haegenborgh’s curiosity and her interest in different musical traditions, formats and instrumentations is voracious. She wrote quartets for elec­tric gui­tars (Zwerm Electric Guitar Quartet), peri­od instru­ments (Nordic Affect), or per­cus­sion­ and elec­tron­ics (Squaring the Circle). She wrote a durational piece for vio­lon­cel­lo with crys­tal objects and electron­ics (Benjamin Glorieux), solos for melod­ic instruments of the 16th cen­tu­ry and per­cus­sion, music for choir, and a number of tri­os, including for lute, voice and per­cus­sion; oboe d’amore, piano and tenor; and elec­tric gui­tar, vio­lin and piano; as well as pieces for large and small ensembles in various formations.

Heleen per­forms her own com­positions for piano with elec­tron­ics, and in duos with Icelandic harpsichordist Gudrun Oskarsdottir, Christian Mendoza (jazz piano), Esther Venrooy (elec­tron­ics), Frederik Leroux (jazz gui­tar) and improv with Tsubasa Hori (Taiko). She was part of the European Melting Pot in Wroclaw, Istanbul Express in Istanbul with Erdem Helvagioglu, Peking Express in China with Wu Fei, and No Choice Toekomstmuziek. Recent albums include Affordances for choir (SN Variations, June 2025) and High Carbon for piano and elec­tron­ics (W.E.R.F. Records, October 2025). In December a large sym­phony of city sounds will be pre­miered in De Singel 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. Her music appears on Entr’acte, El Negocito Records, De Werf Records, Logos, SN Variations and Het Balanseer.