Jos van Immerseel
Jos van Immerseel
Pianist, conductor, researcher, collector, professor: the work of Jos van Immerseel is his life and that life is music.
Biography
His primary teachers were Flor Peeters, organ and composition; Eugeen Traey, piano; Jef Alpaerts, chamber music; Lucie Frateur, voice; Kenneth Gilbert, harpsichord; and Daniël Sternefeld, conducting. He is also self-taught in organology, rhetoric, fortepiano and clavichord.
In 1987 he founded Anima Eterna Brugge, a symphony orchestra that aims to use the instruments that were actually familiar to the composers and that inspired them. Anima has been in residence at the Bruges Concertgebouw since 2003 where it, next to performing concerts, also participates in educational activities and recording albums.
Van Immerseel taught for years at the Conservatories of Antwerp, Amsterdam and Paris and has been invited as guest teacher by the Scola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basel), Indiana University (Bloomington) and Kunitachi College (Tokyo).
He has been a guest conductor with many orchestras including the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, the Wiener Akademie, the orchestra of the Mozarteum, etc.
He has built up a unique collection of historic keyboard instruments that occasionally accompany him at his concerts and are used in album recordings.
His work can be heard on over 120 CD recordings from Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, Channel Classics and the prestigious Outhere label Alpha.
In 2010 he received the Career Prize from the city of Bremen, the Klara Career Prize followed in 2018. Recently, Vice-president of the Flemish Government and Flemish Minister of Culture, Sven Gatz awarded him the highest distinction for a life in service of classical music in Flanders.
Currently van Immerseel is working together with Anima Eterna Brugge’s team, musicians and the board of directors, to ensure a solid future for this internationally based organization.