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Applause academic year 2025-2026

Leading and supporting roles, debut and compilation albums, finalist spots, beginner's luck, and career awards... here you can read about who recently received applause and why in the 2025-2026 academic year.

 

Jazz

  • Four stars for the album “Time Change” by the Milan Verbist Trio in De Standaard! In addition to Milan, the trio also consists of alumni Toon Rumen (bass) and Jens Meijer (drums).
  • Four stars in De Standaard for Steiger's new album, “Mowglowski's First Take”. Steiger consists of alumni Simon Raman and Kobe Boon, together with Gilles Vandecaveye-Pinoy.

Classical Music

  • Pianist-composer and teacher Mathias Coppens will take up his post as the new director of the Festival of Flanders Mechelen/Kempen on September 1. He will continue to teach in the Music programme.
  • Federico La Rosa (M1 Flute student) has been awarded second place on the reserve list for the symphony orchestra of Matera, Basilicata, Italy.
  • Laurens Romboud (3rd bachelor tuba) recently won the audition for the Regimentsfanfare Garde Grenadiers en Jagers, where he will now start working as a reservist.
  • Gitte Bongaers, Maria Leiva Sepúlveda, Itay Shamir, and Meadhbh Ní Ruairc were all selected for the final of the Concorso Severino Gazzelloni in Naples! We will find out the results on September 26.
  • Violinist and alumnus Abraham Constantino Noguera was honored in Huelva, Spain, for his impressive career at our school and with the National Orchestra of Belgium.
  • Alumna Natalia Gladkowska (recently graduated) has been appointed flute soloist at the Filharmonia Dolnośląska in Jelenia, Poland.
  • Giulia Bellotti, piccolo master's student, won the audition for solo flute/piccolo with the Bundespolizeiorchester München.
  • The new season of the vocal studies department of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel has started. Alumna Vocal Studies Fleur Strijbos is one of the participants.
  • Viola student Teresa Macedo Ferreira won the biggest Portuguese music competition last week and is now officially “Young Portuguese Artist of the Year”.
  • Julita Burzynska won the position of principal flutist in the Krakow Philharmonic Orchestra.
  • Emma Wils, alumna Guitar, released her first album! The album is called Serenades of Spain.
  • Orchestral conducting alumnus Michiel Delange is conducting two opera productions at La Monnaie this season, with big names on and off the stage. In addition, his ensemble deCompagnie, which he leads together with teacher Mathias Coppens, is touring with Faust, a co-production with De Maan and Theater Arsenaal (featuring Koen De Graeve, among others), with more than twenty performance(s) in Flanders. Under his direction, the International Opera Academy is also collaborating on Così fan tutte this season, with performances at the Bourla.
  • Flávia Valente was selected for a temporary position as flute/piccolo with the Sinfonieorchester Basel.
  • Samantha Arbogast won the audition for piccolo solo with the French La Musique des Transmissions.

Drama

  • Both Flor Nelissen's and Emma Van Haastert's podcasts have been nominated for the annual NTR podcast award. Be sure to listen and vote, of course. Perhaps they will follow in the footsteps of alumna Media, writing and performance art Winter De Cock, who won last year with her audio work (baar)moeder.
  • Reinhilde Decleir becomes the 25th Maestro Honoris Causa! Read all about it here.
  • Alumna Music creation and performance art Julia Rosenhart has written new music. Available to watch and listen to via your favourite music channels from 12 September.
  • Emma Rotsaert, alumna of Music creation and performance art, plays a leading role in the new series “How to kill your Sister”. She talks about her acting and her music in Focus Knack.
  • Masters of Media, writing and performance art Louise Anthonissen and David Weel are guests at CHAOS, the Podcast Festival, on 28 September in Tolhuis Amsterdam.
  • Louise Anthonissen and David Weel (alumni Drama-Media, writing and performance art) have been nominated for the Flemish podcast awards, or the Oorkondes, in the Story category for their final project Als ik morgen doodga(If I die tomorrow). The award ceremony will take place on Friday 7 November in Ostend!
  • Chloë Onyinye, alumna Acting, shines as Judit in Judit zkt at Het Nieuwstedelijk. And we're not the only ones who think so. The reviews are rave!
  • Alumnus Acting Francis Geeraerts is playing in Family, the new show by Louis Janssen. Excellent reviews here too!
  • In October, FC Bergman's new production Guernica Guernica kicked off a series at the Toneelhuis.
  • The FC Bergman theatre company consists of actors and theatre makers who met during our drama programme. Unfortunately, it's too late to get tickets now. Everything is sold out.
  • Alumnus Media, writing and performance art and educational master's student Sander Deckx saw a new performance premiere with Speels Collectief. “Content Warning: weinig prikkels” (Content Warning: few stimuli) is currently only playing in the Netherlands.
  • Prince K Appia, alumnus Acting, was a guest on “Niks te Zien” (Nothing to See) on VRT. A really nice episode, available to watch on VRT Max.
  • On 21 November, the eleventh VWS Oeuvre Prize will be awarded in the Gothic Hall of Bruges City Hall. This year, the prize goes to writer and Media, writing and performance art teacher Lara Taveirne. In October, the reworking of her debut novel was also published, now under the title “Meisjes van Krijt” (Girls of Chalk).

Dance

  • Master's student in Dance Héctor Espuela Pablo breathed new life into the story of Sleeping Beauty in The Making of a Lethargy, which can be seen at the Monty from mid-October.
  • Bachelor Dance alumna Marah Haj is currently touring with her performance Language: no broblem, which has also been selected for the Theaterfestival in Ghent and the prestigious Theaterprijzen. We will find out how that turns out on September 9.
  • Bachelor Dance alumni in dance Emily Jane Steele, Lluna Galarza Serra, Olivia Busquets Moreu, and Tomàs Gispert Jiménez (humanECHOs) were in residence at Schouwburg Noord last summer, where they presented their final results in August.
  • Bachelor Dance student Sam Hawkes was selected for A Night Called Quest, the presentation festival of the Antwerp Queer Arts Festival and De Studio, which took place in August 2025.
  • Alumni Dan Musset, Maisie Woodford, Pierre Bastin, and Florence Lenon will dance in Jan Martens' THEDOGDAYS ARE OVER 2.0 this coming season.
  • Third-year Bachelor Dance students Elsa Chantre and Noémie Hà were awarded internships at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in Jan Martens' production ‘de Materie’.
  • In October, teacher Tuur Marinus was in Macau for the Chinese premiere of two of his performance(s): “Still Animals” and “TH LNG GDBY”. TH LNG GDBY is the artistic outcome of the two-year research project “Choreographing Potentialities of Collectivity” that Tuur carried out several years ago through CORPoREAL.