Robert CASTEELS
conductor and composer

Robert Casteels leads a distinguished professional life as educator, composer and conductor. He graduated from both Royal Music Conservatoires of Brussels, from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and from the Juilliard School, New York.

He was staff conductor at the Royal Opera House of Brussels during the Gerard MORTIER era, when La Monnaie was one of the world's leading centres for lyric renouveau. The highly-praised TV broadcast of Wolfgang RIHM's opera, Jakob Lenz that led to a number of exciting chamber opera and music theater productions.

Robert Casteels has conducted ballets, operas and symphonic repertoire in the USA, Australia, France, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong and Belgium. Orchestras and festivals appreciate his sharp efficiency and keen musicianship. Original ideas for programs are part of his enthusiasm to communicate and inspire the audience.

His repertoire extends from the early classics to contemporary music. He has conducted first performances in festivals such as Festival Ars Musica, Wien Modern, Donaueschingen and Brisbane.

Robert Casteels has composed a growing corpus of multidisciplinary works, which combine organically the Gamelan orchestra, European, Indian and Chinese instruments as well as computer-generated sounds and visual images.

The youngest recipient ever, he was awarded in 2001 Belgium's highest cultural medallion, the Christoffel Plantin prize, for his contribution to the diffusion of Belgian music abroad and for his research on tuning systems and on cross-cultural composition.

May 2003