Bernard Foccroulle was born in Liège (Belgium) in 1953. He has performed many world premieres of composers such as Philippe Boesmans, Brian Ferneyhough, Betsy Jolas, Xavier Darasse, Jonathan Harvey, Pascal Dusapin; at the same time he recorded masterworks of the organ repertoire, from Francisco Correa de Arauxo to Charles Tournemire, from Heinrich Scheidemann to Dietrich Buxtehude.

His discography as soloist includes more than forty CDs. Between 1982 and 1997, he recorded the complete organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach for the Ricercar label. For these recordings, he carefully chose the most beautifully preserved historic instruments. Since then he has devoted most of his time as performer to the Northern German School. In 2007, his recording of the Dietrich Buxtehude’s complete organ works won the Diapason d’Or and the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros among other prizes.

In addition to solo organ recitals all over the world, he regularly plays with singers, with cornetto players such as Jean Tubéry and Lambert Colson, as well as with Palestinian singer and ‘Ud player Moneim Adwan. Another important aspect of Bernard Foccroulle’s work is the combination of organ music with other art forms, for example his collaboration with choreographers Jan Fabre (Preparatio mortis) and Salva Sanchis. One of his most outstanding current projects is Darkness and Light, in collaboration with Australian video artist Lynette Wallworth.

While continuing his career as organist, he became director of the Brussels opera-house La Monnaie in 1992, holding this position until 2007. In 1993, he founded the association Culture and Democracy, which campaigns for widespread participation in cultural life. He has been director of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence from 2007 until 2018. In 2017, he got the Leadership Award at the International Opera Awards in London.

From 2009 to 2019, Bernard Foccroulle has been professor of Organ at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Brussels.

As composer, Bernard Foccroulle has written works for soprano and orchestra (Am Rande der Nacht after Rilke), for baritone and chamber music ensemble (Due after De Luca…), for soprano, baritone and chamber music ensemble (E vidi quattro stelle after Dante’s Purgatorio), soprano and piano (Quatre mélodies d’après Verlaine). Zauberland, a cycle of melodies for soprano and piano on poems by Martin Crimp has been premiered at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris in April 2019, staged by Katie Mitchell. This production has been touring to Weimar, London (Royal Opera Hoouse), New York (Lincoln Center), Opéra de Lille and La Monnaie (Brussels)…

He has also composed a cycle of pieces for historic organs (CD AEON, Diapason d’Or 2016).

His compositions are published by Henry Lemoine, Ricordi and Doblinger.

He is the author of La naissance de l’individu dans l’art (Grasset, 2003), which was written in collaboration with Robert Legros and Tzvetan Todorov. He also published two books made of interviews : Entre passion et résistance (Labor, 2005) and Faire vivre l’opéra, un art qui donne sens au monde (Actes Sud, 2018)

He is Doctor Honoris Causa of the Montréal University and Aix-Marseille Université.