Benjamin Haemhouts
The Belgian conductor and composer Benjamin Haemhouts began his professional career as a trombonist with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. During this time, he conducted various youth orchestras and worked as assistant conductor to his teacher, Alexander Polyanichko.
As a guest conductor he conducted the Belgian National Orchestra (Belgium), the Argovia Philharmonic (Switzerland), Brussels Philharmonic (Belgium), Bamberger Symphoniker (Germany), Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra and the Orquesta de Cámara de Bellas Artes (Mexico).
He is due to make his debut with the Philharmonie Zuidnederland (Netherlands) and Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (Belgium) in the forthcoming season.
In 2008 he became Artistic Director of the Belgian orchestra CASCO Phil, focusing on innovative programs that emphasize contemporary music combined with classical music and his own compositions as well as commissioning many new works.
He is a passionate contributor to projects for socially disadvantaged children and he is known as a keynote speaker in orchestral workshops for companies and their management teams, making him a pioneer in alternative cultural financing in Belgium.
Since 2019 he is also Artistic Director of the Antwerp Spring Festival to which he invites groundbreaking classical artists, ensembles, dance companies and orchestras as well as key players on the Belgian pop and rock scene, emphasizing the many different faces of the harbor city of Antwerp.
Artistically, in recent years contemporary dance has played a more prominent role in his work as a conductor and creative mind. Besides conducting performances of choreographies by Martha Graham and Maurice Béjart, he has worked with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sharon Fridman, Daniel Proietto and Althea Nuñez, for whom he commissioned a new choreography ‘Close, Closer…’
Benjamin Haemhouts is a versatile artistic personality cooperating at various levels with other opera and dance companies, orchestras and ensembles as well as initiating own projects as the Artistic Director of CASCO Phil.
