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.