Frank Agsteribbe a versatile musician who works as a conductor, keyboard player, and composer. In all his activities he strives for direct expression, flexibility, and living colour, whether in opera (as director and continuo player), or in baroque or modern music. He has played with La Petite Bande, the Huelgas Ensemble and Anima Eterna, giving concerts in various European countries, in Mexico and in China.

He is the founder, harpsichordist, and director of the Belgian baroque orchestra B’Rock (until 2013), which has gone on to striking success in Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, and South Africa. He has also worked as a guest conductor with the Collegium Vocale Gent, Concerto Köln, the Luxembourg Philharmonic and the National Orchestras of Belgium and Portugal.

Frank Agsteribbe is musical director of the Luxemburg-based vocal ensemble cantoLX. Since its inaugural concerts in 2010, cantoLX is now firmly established in the music scene around Luxembourg, and in 2011 made debut appearances at the MA Festival Brugge, the Utrecht Early Music Festival and at the Philharmonie Luxembourg. In 2012, cantoLX presented its first recording with Frescobaldi and Cage. Further recordings include another Frescobaldi cd, and the Oratorio per la settimana santa by Luigi Rossi. Both CDs were nominated for the International Classical Music Awards.

Agsteribbe has more than 100 compositions to his name. Important works have been performed in Brazil, Berlin (the Konzerthaus and the German Opera) and at the Gaudeamus Festival in Amsterdam. Since 1989 he teaches at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp.

Hein Boterberg is Head of Music and repertoire coach at the IOA and works as a visiting vocal coach at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester (UK). He is also an acclaimed accompanist for song recitals.

He studied at the Conservatoire in his birth city of Ghent. At the Royal Scottish Academy and the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama he specialised in singing accompaniment. He was also holder of the Geoffrey Parsons Junior fellowship at the Royal College of Music.

In de Munt | la Monnaie in Brussels, he assisted Antonio Pappano and Renato Balsadonna and worked in productions with singers such as Susan Graham, José van Dam, Jonas Kaufmann and Joseph Calleja. He has also played for conductors such as Kazushi Ono and Alessandro de Marchi. In addition to this, he has worked with singers for the Filharmonie, the Flemish Radio Choir, the Flemish Opera, Covent Garden, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and the Collegium Vocale, Ghent.

In song recitals he has played in Europe, Asia and Australia in venues such as the Wigmore Hall and the Purcell Room in London, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and many more, for singers such as Sophie Karthäuser, Christian Immler, Malin Christensson, and Jonathan Lemalu. In 2006 he started the recital series Vocal Journey, for which he devised and played concerts with young singers from all over the world.

He was coach and pianist for singing courses in the UK, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Portugal and France. He was official accompanist for vocal masterclasses by Sir Thomas Allen, Robin Bowman, Emma Kirkby, Ann Murray, Loh Siew-Tuan, Graham Johnson and Dame Margaret Price.

Tom Goossens started studying drama at KASK in Ghent, Belgium, in 2012. From his third bachelor year onwards, he focused on opera direction. In addition to his own work, he assisted opera director Guy Joosten at the International Opera Academy in 2016 and 2017. Goossens became a resident at Translab, the young-maker operation within Muziektheater Transparant. Under Translab and his own company, DESCHONECOMPANIE, he created Così and Le Nozze which, together with his graduation performance Don Juan, form DEDAPONTETRILOGY, three adaptations of the Mozart-da Ponte operas. In this cycle, the three performances were programmed at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (OBV), De Munt, Operadagen Rotterdam and Theater Aan Zee.

Early 2019, Goossens created his first children’s performance Banket! Or De Wraak Op De Macbeths for OBV. In 2019, he became an artist in residence at OBV. After a semi-scenic direction of Der Jasager and Ravel’s one-act L’Heure Espagnole with Flanders Youth Orchestra, he made his opera debut there in 2023 with Le Nozze di Figaro.

With DESCHONECOMPANIE, he created two more opera adaptations: Rigoletto and The Barber. In the summer of 2023, with Muziektheater Transparant, he created a radical adaptation of J. Strauss’ Die Fledermaus: Fledermaus Forever.

As an actor, Goossens appeared in Steven Prengels and Arno Synaeve’s musical theatre production Berg and in his own production Rigoletto.

Besides working in theatre, Goossens also works as a teacher of Musical Theatrical Education at the classical singing class of the Ghent Conservatory of Music.

foto: Marcel Lennartz