Karin de Fleyt is an internationally-renowned flutist and soloist in the contemporary music scene, with many flute works dedicated to her.
She is flutist of the HERMESensemble since 2000 and performs as a soloist as well as with many different international ensembles and music theatre companies.
Karin plays the flute, alto flute, piccolo and bass flute, as well as shakuhachi and Carnatic flute.
Karin took her masters degree (MA) at the Royal Music Conservatoire in Gent, Belgium (1995), where she already specialized in contemporary flute solo and chamber music repertoire during her studies. QTS at the Royal Music Conservatoire in Gent (1996), Laureate (PGCE) at the Orpheus Institute in Gent (1997 – 2001) during which she taught contemporary music and live electronics at the Royal Music Conservatoire in Gent. She is appointed as principal lecturer at Leeds College of Music in the classical pathway since September 2013. Karin is lecturer for the professional teachers program at the School of Arts/Royal Music Conservatoire in Gent since 2009.
In performing, Karin is constantly looking for new experiments, resulting in great collaborations with many well known composers and performers, one of the most memorable is a ten year long collaboration with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Festivals include Romaeuropa, Holland Festival, Operadagen Rotterdam, Ars Musica, MOFO Festival, Festival d’Automne, Costa Rica Music Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Festival van Vlaanderen, Klangspuren Schwaz, British flute society, Transit New Music Festival, CoMa, Southbank Festival amongst others.
In teaching, Karin’s prime objective is to work with young people, teaching them techniques and skills to interpret different music styles with confidence. To this end, she is regularly being asked to give masterclasses/workshops and lecture-recitals (Trinity Laban Conservatoire, RNCM, RCM, Maastricht conservatoire, Den Haag conservatoire, Costa Rica flute festival, …).
Karin de Fleyt performed as a soloist and with several ensembles and orchestras with conductors Marco Angius, Koen Kessels, Karlheinz Stockhausen, James Wood, Zsolt Nagy, Clark Rundel, Wolfgang Lischke, Peter Rundel, Mark Heron, Ed Spanjaard, etc.
She is co-founder of duo NewFLow, specializing in low flutes repertoire together with Carla Rees.
She plays an Eva Kingma quartertone alto flute.
Conductor Koen Kessels is Music Director of The Royal Ballet. He made his Royal Ballet debut in 2008 conducting The Nutcracker and has since returned every season, to conduct repertory including The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and Symphony in C and the world premieres of Raven Girl, Untouchable, Woolf Works, Frankenstein and Multiverse. He was appointed to his current position at the start of the 2015/16 Season.
With HERMESensemble he explores the boundaries of experiment, confrontation and expansion.
Kessels studied at the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Music. He was appointed Music Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2010. He is a regular guest conductor for Opéra National de Paris, and has conducted for such companies as New York City Ballet, the Théâtre du Capitole, Dutch National Ballet, Vienna State Opera, Teatro dell’ Opera di Roma, Teatro Real, Madrid, and the New National Theatre, Tokyo.
His ballet repertory includes Le Parc, Coppélia, La Source, Proust, Cinderella, Hurlevent, Hommage à Jerôme Robbins, Giselle, French Program, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Firebird, Jewels, Romeo and Juliet and The Prince of the Pagodas. Opera repertory includes Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin (Antwerp), Hosokawa’s Hanjo (La Monnaie, Brussels) and operas by Mozart, Verdi, Puccini and Britten, among others.
As Artistic Director of HERMESensemble he has collaborated with such composers as Abrahamsen, Bartholomée, Benjamin, Brewaeys, Ferrari, Henderickx, Hosokawa, Van Hove, Huber, Maresz, Murail, Pagh-Paan, Van Parys, Saariaho, Talbot and Yared.
Kessels is an honorary professor of Birmingham University, Artistic Director of Inspiratum and on the artistic direction team at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp.
Mireille Capelle appeared in various films and plays, as in an impressive number of operatic roles including Wagnerian parts such as Eva and Kundry, or Salome and Der Komponist (Richard Strauss) and a slew of French characters from Charlotte and Metella to Jeanne d’Arc (Jeann d’Arc au bûcher, by Honegger). In parallel she developped a large concert repertoire including main sacred and secular works from early baroque to contemporary music. She sang under the baton of Marc Minkowski, Jos Van Immerseel, Massimo Zanetti, Sylvain Cambreling, Seiji Ozawa, Silvio Varviso …and was directed by Robert Carsen, Guy Joosten, Andrea Breth, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Alvis Hermanis…
Mireille Capelle belongs to the most versatile singers of her generation. She manages to combine most intimate singing as a classical recitalist and opera singeer with pioneering all round “performances” as a vocalist, composer and soundscaper. Her apport to contemporary music is enormous, including fruitful encounters with composers such as Cage, Crumb, Carter, Maxwell Davis, Kagel, Battistelli, Sciarrino, Brewaeys, Hubber, Wim Henderickx…
Furthermore she is linked to the HERMESensemble as a member of the artistic committee and performer.
Her sound scapings also defined as Sonic Architecture, are electronic sculptures to be performed as a live format. The first one, Kinesis Akinetos, was created at the art community Kanaal Axel Vervoordt (B), beneath the Anish Kapoor installation entitled “At the age of the World”. Nefesh and Ruach were created at the “Contemporary Music Festival” in Liège (B). Anello and Tra at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice, eventually Naga had its première in Paris.
Mireille Capelle composed the sound track for La Perle, a movie by the surrealist film-maker, Henri d’Ursel. Between 21 November 2024 and 28 March 2025, the film will be part of the exhibition Paris, Capitale de la Perle organised by the prestigious L’ÉCOLE, School of Jewelry Arts in Paris.
As a Professor at the Royal school of arts from Gent she has for many years largely contributed to the all round vocal education of the next generation singers.
The virtuoso pianist, composer and author Geert Callaert has obtained the highest degrees for piano, chamber music, piano accompaniment, advanced musical analysis, composition and conducting (the special prize LemmensTinel) at the former Lemmens Institute.
In 2002 he graduated at the Orpheus Institute with a project on the piano music and chamber music with percussion of Stockhausen, Xenakis and Wuorinen. During his formative years he participated in many seminars, among them the Stockhausen courses (Stockhausen Courses 1998, 1999, 2000, Kürten, Germany) and seminars at the IRCAM in Paris.
Today, he is much sought after as a soloist and chamber musician at home and abroad because of his large and virtuoso repertoire, ranging across the whole gamut from classical to new music.
His compositions and writing abilities have constantly gained interest worldwide. His performances as a pianist and a conductor as well as his own music compositions can be found on over 30 CDs and DVDs. He collaborated on different film scorings as a performer and his name pops up on a regular base in the credits of films such as High Rise and many others.
He is currently a professor piano in the Master of Music Programme of the Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Tilburg, The Netherlands. Different composers – Marc Yeats (UK), Robert Groslot (Belgium), Michael Sahl (USA), Idin Samimi Mofakham (Iran), Martyna Kosecka (Poland), Kee Yong Chong (Singapore), Michael Sahl (USA) – have written their most beautiful piano music for him.
Geert Callaert is a member of the artistic board, a co-founder of the HERMESensemble and a core performer in the ensemble.
At the beginning of 2016 the Union of Belgian Composers has awarded him the FUGUE Trophy for the performance of Belgian art music in an unanimous vote. He often collaborates with different professional ensembles and orchestras in Belgium and he is a welcome guest at festivals and international competitions worldwide. In May and June 2015 he has performed Green Table during the concert tour “In Flanders Fields” with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (read a superb concert critics in the Financial Times of May 12th 2015). April 2016 he was performing all Persian and Belgian new music as a star soloist at the First Contemporary Music Festival in Tehran (Iran).
He has published different articles and texts in the past on contemporary music and art in general for different occasions.
September-October 2017 and March-April 2018 he has been a music director for two new productions with the Royal Ballet of Flanders creating new music by Gavin Bryars with stage director Edouard Lock.
Gaetan La Mela started his musical career at the Music Academy in Genk. He then continued his studies at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven, where he obtained a Master in Music degree from Mr. Ouitsits. At the same institute he also obtained a pedagogical diploma and a specialization in chamber music. He attended masterclasses with Rainer Seegers and Franz Schindlebeck (Berliner Philharmoniker).
Gaetan La Mela is one of the regular core musicians of the HERMESensemble and is a member of Belgian Brass.
For HERMESensemble he performed solo performances with music from, among others, Kaija Saariaho and Salvatore Sciarrino. Gaetan is a fixed value of HERMESensemble.
Marc Tooten studied at the Brussels Royal Conservatory and went on to pursue further studies at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. During the course of his career, he has been the leader of the viola section of various esteemed orchestras and chamber orchestras such as I Fiamminghi, the Beethoven Academie, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, the Radio Chamber Philharmonic (Hilversum, the Netherlands), and the Orquestra Ciudad of Granada.
Marc is permanent viola player with HERMESensemble and is part of the artistic board.
He is currently the solo principal violist of the Brabant Philharmonic in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. As an interpreter of chamber music he is highly regarded in international circles; in addition to other ensembles, he is a member of the Salzburg Soloists and the Arriaga Quartet as well as the Taneyev String Trio, which he co-founded.
Such distinguished musicians as Abdel Rahman El Bacha, Eduard Brunner, András Adorján, Martin Lovett, Martha Argerich, Boris Berezovsky and Itamar Golan have been among his numerous chamber music partners.
At the Lemmens Institute (Leuven, Belgium) as professor of viola and chamber music and at the Maastricht Conservatory, he is pleased to impart his musical experience and insights with great enthusiasm to young musicians.
Bianca Van Roosbroeck studied musicology in Leuven and then started working as a public relations officer for deFilharmonie (now the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra) and taught ‘general music culture’ at the Brasschaat music academy. She also took an expert evening class in ‘Management in Music and Performing Arts’ and obtained a master’s degree in law from the University of Antwerp. In 2016, Bianca started at Musica, Impulscentrum, first as a production coordinator and later as a business manager. Working behind the scenes to make artistic projects possible and to connect organisations, artists and audiences is what drives her.
Since 2025, Bianca has been the business manager at HERMESensemble and works as a member support co-worker for oKo (Overleg Kunstenorganisaties).
Adam Vincent Clarke (b. 1992, Nova Scotia) is a Canadian composer and sound artist known for his poetic musical language, folkloric textures, and dramatic flair. Based in Belgium, his work spans ballet/dance, theatre, and contemporary music, with an expanding portfolio of commissions and premieres on leading stages across Europe and North America. Recent highlights include collaborations with John-William Watson (Sadler’s Wells, NDC Wales), Nicola Wills (BalletX, National Ballet of Albania, Origen Festival), and Het Nationale Ballet. Blending classical instruments, electronics, and sound design, Clarke composes with a signature tone of gewaltsame Schönheit—violent beauty.
As a composer and production leader, Adam brings the same artistic vision and hands-on approach to his work with HERMESensemble, contributing both creative and organizational expertise to its projects.
Marlies Hollevoet is a Belgian composer with a passion for colourful, angular music driven by rhythm and a distinctive fondness for the sound of the saxophone.
She has written works for ensembles such as the Ricciotti Ensemble, Virago Symphonic Orchestra, Eastman Saxophone Project, Lilith Ensemble, among others.
After studying piano and composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp with Wim Henderickx, Steven Prengels and Eliane Rodrigues, Marlies moved to the United States to further develop her compositional voice at the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Bob Morris, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon. While at Eastman, she also taught composition and orchestration before returning to Belgium.
At HERMESensemble, Marlies brings both her artistic perspective and strong organizational skills to support and help shape all aspects of the ensemble’s productions.
