Bart Verheyen is a versatile musician. At an early age, he won numerous organ, piano and composition prizes in Belgium and abroad, including a scholarship from the Flemish Government (YoTaM) and first prize for organ at the national Axion Classics competition. He studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (with Piet Kuijken, Aleksandr Madzar and Boyan Vodenitcharov) where he obtained his Master Piano magna cum laude in 2010. At the Hochschule für Musik Luzern (CH), he specialised with Konstantin Lifschitz and Florian Hoelscher thanks to a Swiss state scholarship (ESKAS). He concluded his piano studies there summa cum laude, as well as his organ studies at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp with Joris Verdin. In 2019, his organ playing won him the Prix d'Or of the first Paris Music Competition. He attended international masterclasses with Helmut Deutsch, Julius Drake, Bernard Foccroulle, Hartmut Höll, Ton Koopman, Alexei Lubimov, Benoît Mernier, Heime Müller (Artemis Quartet), Heinrich Schiff, Gerhard Schulz (Alban Berg Quartet), Roger Vignoles and Harald Vogel among others at the Lucerne Festival Academy and the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.
Bart has performed piano concertos by Bohuslav Martinu, Sergei Rachmaninov and Igor Stravinsky with the Brussels Chamber Orchestra, the Royal Guides' Band, the orchestra of the Brussels Royal Conservatory and the Brussels Wind Ensemble. His repertoire ranges from Renaissance to contemporary music. In his programmes, he often weaves works from different style periods into a cohesive whole and plays his own arrangements and compositions. In the spring of 2021, he composed the music and soundscape for the theatrical installation Captain Nemo, with actor Peter de Graef as Nemo. Kapitein Nemo is the first production of NARWAL, a home for musical installations and performances, of which Bart is a co-founder. Commissioned by the Contius Foundation, he is currently working on a composition for several choirs and organ that will premiere in 2023. He is composer in residence there.
Bart is very active as a chambrist. He has given concerts with the ensembles Collegium Novum Zürich, Ensemble Mendelssohn, I Solisti, Odysseia and Oxalys, and has a permanent song duo with the internationally acclaimed soprano Katrien Baerts.
Bart has created many compositions and collaborated with composers Oscar Bianchi, Chaya Czernowin, Beat Furrer, Blaise Ubaldini and Gérard Zinsstag, and with conductors Emilio Pomárico, David Robertson, Peter Rundel, Jonathan Stockhammer, Jeffrey Tate and Ronald Zollman. Composer Frederik Neyrinck dedicated a piano cycle to him. Bart has played concerts for Bozar, de Bijloke, Festival van Vlaanderen, Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, Les Jardins Musicaux, Lucerne Festival, Salzburg Biennale and Tonhalle Zürich, among others, and can be heard on national radio and television in Belgium and the Netherlands. In 2022 his first recording as a soloist will be released with César Franck's organ works for the Musique en Wallonie label, in cooperation with the organists Joris Verdin and Cindy Castillo.
Bart taught Lied at the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels, Piano at the Hochschule für Musik Luzern, and currently teaches at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp.