The Belgian recorder player and conductor, Peter Van Heyghen, was trained as a recorder player and singer at the Royal Conservatory in Gent (Belgium). Through the years he developed into an internationally acknowledged specialist in the field of historical performance practice of both Renaissance and Baroque music.
Peter Van Heyghen performs worldwide as a soloist, with the recorder consort Mezzaluna, with the chamber music ensemble More Maiorum, as the co-director of the Dutch vocal Renaissance ensemble Cappella Pratensis and as the conductor and artistic director of the Brussels Baroque orchestra Les Muffatti. He is a regularly invited guest at the early music festivals of Bruges, Antwerp, Utrecht, and St.Petersburg, among others.
In 2005 he was selected as the »festival star« of the Bruges Musica Antiqua festival by the Flemish radio channel Klara. Between 2007 and 2009 his ensembles will be in residence at the Centre for Early Music Augustinus in Antwerp. He has recorded for the labels Passacaille, Eufoda, Accent, Opus 111, Klara and Ramée.
Peter Van Heyghen is also active as a researcher, publicist and teacher. He is professor of Historical Performance Practice at the Early Music Departments of the Royal Conservatories in Brussels and The Hague, and is also regularly invited to give master-classes, lectures and conduct workshops throughout the world.
In more recent years, Peter Van Heyghen has been increasingly active as a conductor and teacher in the field of the Baroque operatic repertoire. Together with stage-director and choreographer Sigrid T'Hooft he has conducted the opera workshop at the Händel-Akademie in Karlsruhe since 2003, and they have been invited to be the artistic directors of a full-scale production of George Frideric Handel's opera Radamisto at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe in February 2009. He currently lives in Antwerp, Belgium. |