Elias Gistelinck was born in 1935 in Beveren aan de Leie. At the early age of fifteen, he enrolled at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, where he studied trumpet, chamber music, harmony and counterpoint. He later pursued his studies at the Conservatory in Paris and in 1962 participated in the Ferienkurse in Darmstadt. Gistelinck was already playing the trumpet in the National Orchestra of Belgium at the age of seventeen. Although he was a laureate of the international music competition in Munich in 1953, he left classical music behind him after several years in order to play in a jazz orchestra, touring throughout Europe. He would later abandon his career as a performing musician altogether in order to devote himself full-time to composing. From 1961, Gistelinck worked for the BRT (Belgian Radio and Television), first as a freelance assistant, and later as first producer at Radio 3, the classical programme. There he dedicated himself to promoting the broadcasting of Belgian music. In 1975, he took several important steps in this regard: the BRT would commission ten works per year from Belgian composers; some 25 works by Belgian composers were to be broadcast per week, and conductors and performers would be obliged to program at least one work by a Belgian composer in BRT concerts and recordings. Gistelinck received the Fuga Prize for this engagement in promoting Belgian music. Elias Gistelinck has received awards for many of his compositions, both in Belgium and abroad. In Belgium he has won, among other prizes, the Prize of the Belgian Music Press and the Belgian Artistic Promotion Prize. In France, his complete oeuvre was crowned with the Prix de la Fondation de France and in 1969 he won the Italia Prize for his Ndessé ou Blues. Gistelinck passed away on 25 March 2005.