Daan Janssens

Daan Janssens (°1983) is a musician at LOD. He studied the violin, the piano and music theory at the Bruges music academy. From 2002 to 2007, he studied composition and orchestral conducting at the Ghent Conservatoire under Frank Nuyts, Filip Rathé and Godfried‐Willem Raes. He attended master-classes in composition given by Marco Stroppa, Isabel Mundry and Bruno Mantovani, and studied ensemble conducting with the Ensemble Modern and Johannes Kalitzke.

His string quartet …Passages… (2005) won the first prize in the Week of Contemporary Music composition competition in 2006. His compositions (...nuit cassée.), (étude scénographique), (es) (...en paysage de nuit...), (Paysages – études) I and Les Aveugles were selected by ISCM Flanders (the International Society for Contemporary Music ‐ Flemish section). His music has been performed at events such as the TRANSIT festival, Ars Musica at the Concertgebouw Bruges, the 2009 ISCM World Music Days, Darmstädter Ferienkurse and Festival Musica in Strasbourg. He has worked with, among others, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Musiques Nouvelles, the Spectra Ensemble, Vocaallab, the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain and soloist Jean‐Guihen Queyras.

Since 2006, he has been the conductor of the Nadar Ensemble, a contemporary music ensemble. With Nadar he has performed at Ars Musica, Festival Musica Strasbourg and the Donaueschinger Musiktage, among others. He has been working as a research assistant at the Ghent Conservatoire since 2007. Since 2008, he works closely together with LOD. In 2012, in collaboration with LOD, he planned his opera, The Blind, based on the book of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck. This was a cooperation with Patrick Corillon.

In april 2017, Janssens brought a new opera, Menuet, to the stage. This opera, commissioned by LOD, is based on Louis Paul Boon’s book Menuet. Menuet is about a married couple and their maid, who share a house and despite feel lonely. The story shows the living situation from the three different angles. Fabrice Murcia directs the opera, Janssens composes the music.