Berten D'Hollander
EMBRACE YOUR PASSION
I discovered my passion for music at an early age but was also a Soccer enthusiast.
IT WAS MEANT TO BE
After a knee injury, I immersed myself in music and soon was performing in local orchestras and teaching at a university.
LOVE WHAT YOU DO!
I find inspiration all around me - in nature, on stage and with my students! When you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.
Berten D'Hollander on the campus of Stockton College, Pomona, NJ, USA for one of his masterclasses!
Award Winning Musicianship
BIO
Dr. Berten D'Hollander, a laureate of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, is a Concert Flutist and Professor of Flute from Belgium who is known for his popular performances and masterclasses internationally. He holds a PhD in Music with First Prize awards in solfege, flute and chamber music, a pedagogical degree from the Conservatory of Antwerp and a Diplome Superieur in flute. His career spans 30 years of performing in orchestras, chamber groups and as a soloist and professor of the flute. He presently has eight cds to his credit.
Dr. D'Hollander has performed in the Flemish Opera, the Flander's Royal Ballet, the National Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Muntschouwburg and Arts Musica in Belgium. He has been the principal flutist of the Musique Nouvelles since 2000. In addition to performing the classical flute repertoire, he also enjoys performing contemporary music at Warsaw Autumn, Clef du Soleil in Lille and Acanthes in Metz.
Currently Dr. D’Hollander teaches at SZE University in Hungary and is visiting professor of flute at the University of Arkdeniz in Antalya, Turkey in addition to private flute instruction. He gives master classes all over the world as well as performing as a concert flutist and with the D'Hollander/Lestoquoy Flute and Guitar Duo.
Professor D'Hollander's students take the most prestigious positions in first class orchestras world-wide.
Berten D'Hollander - Education
No one would ever have predicted that the six-year-old Berten would ever be a professional musician... not even his musical family members! But when the local woodwind and brass band Saint Cecilia wanted to expand its membership base, this somehow led to his first flute lessons given by the conductor, a clarinetist!
He amazed everyone when he decided not to go to university but instead chose the conservatory after completing his Latin-Greek education. His mother and father were not exactly overjoyed with this decision but Professor Jan Van Reeth at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and principal flute at the Belgian radio orchestra saw something in him despite his lack of earlier music education. He decided to give Berten a chance and admitted him to higher music studies and the rest is history!
Very soon Berten was unexpectedly given the possibility to become a piccoloist in the Antwerp Opera Orchestra. This led quickly to many more orchestral engagements with the 'Filharmonie', the 'National Orchestra' and the ‘National Opera’ (better known as ‘La Monnaie-DeMunt’). In the meantime Berten finished his studies 'cum laude' and proceeded to combine a busy orchestra practice with a nearly full-time schedule teaching little children in music schools.
At the age of 25 he was appointed as Professor of flute at the LUCA School of Arts in Leuven, Belgium, and spent years dedicating himself to learning all aspects of the flute which consisted in a 'dissection to the bone'; a quest for demystification and a reduction of the magical concept of 'talent' to the more 'manageable' thorough professionalization of all the different elements of 'musical-communicative flute playing at the highest level'.
For the last fifteen years, the instrumentally technical groundbreaking demands of today’s contemporary music as principal flute at the 'Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles' and the high level of education that is required in the 'Musikhochschule Köln' contributed to his greater evolution as an artist with a highly personal language and a unique view on music and the world in general.
