Geert De Bièvre

Geert De Bièvre studied in the class of H. Mannes at the Lemmensinstitute in Leuven where he won the diplomes of cello and chamber music with highest distinction and congratulations of the jury. He continued his studies with C. Henkel at the Musikhochschule of Freiburg i. Breisgau and participated in masterclasses with Boris Pergamenschikow, Heinrich Schiff, Marcio Carneiro, Colinn Carr and Thomas Demenga.

Geert De Bièvre is prizewinner of the national competition of the ‘Gemeentekrediet’ and was selected for Sir Yehudi Menuhin’s project ‘Live music now’. He won a ‘Festival award’ in the International Festivalcompetition for young musicians of the Festival of Flanders. In Tilburg he won the price of the public in the U.M. project for students from Flanders and the Netherlands. He is prizewinner of the competition ‘Tenuto’ of the Flemish Radio.

For several years he was member of several Belgian chamber orchestras, in the Beethoven Akademie he was cellosolo.
He played the celloconcerti of J. Haydn, P. Tsjaikowsky, E. Elgar, A. Dvorak, M. De Jong , M. Lindberg and G. Ligeti with different orchestra’s. Over the years he built a reputation as a performer of contemporary music, most recently his execution of the sequenza of L. Berio got a lot of attention and high remarks at the Festival of Saintes. His repertoire includes solopieces by H. Holliger, B.A. Zimmermann, I. Xenakis, K. Saariao, L; Van Hove, S. Sciarrino and hundreds of contemporary pieces for ensemble. Meanwhile, his enthousiasm for period instruments grows: he regularly performs with ensemble Explorations the music of Schubert, Bocchérini, Mendelssohn and Brahms on gut strings. He finds it fascinating to confront old music (on gut strings) with new music (on steel strings) in one concert: he played on two instruments the continuo part of the motet ‘Jesu meine Freude’ of J.S. Bach and solo pieces by G. Kurtag. In another program he combined work by R. Schumann and the clarinettrio of J. Brahms with studies for cello solo by S. Sciarrino.
As a soloïst he collaborated in projects with the dance company ‘les Ballets C de la B’ and the ‘Koninklijk Ballet van Vlaanderen’, he was invited by the collegium Vocale to perform pieces for cello solo during a tour with P. Hillier.
As a teacher he is active at the Lemmensinstitute of Leuven and the Academy of Lier.
With the ensemble ‘Ictus’ he is a guest of the major festivals for contemporary music in the world and he is member of the Prometheus ensemble. Together with Jan Michiels, Nana Kawamura and Tony Nijs he plays in the pianoquartet ‘Tetra Lyre’. Their recent recording of the pianoquartets of A. Dvorak was highly praised in ‘Diapason’.