Heleen

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Heleen Van Haegenborgh start­ed her career as a pianist, spe­cialised in con­tem­po­rary music and extend­ed tech­niques. Over the last 10 years, she’s very active as a com­pos­er with com­mis­sions in the fields of con­tem­po­rary music, old music, the­ater, visu­al arts and jazz. 

In a review of Squaring the Circle, 2023 and refer­ring to her record for foghorns and piano (2013), she was described by Clive Bell in The Wire as a com­pos­er whose capac­i­ty for intrigue persists. 

She worked close­ly togeth­er and made sev­er­al records with visu­al artists and musi­cians with oth­er back­grounds: jazz, elec­tron­ics, Japanese music, free jazz,…She is seen as a musi­cian who con­nects the cir­cuits of con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal music, free impro, sound art and exper­i­men­tal underground. 

As a com­pos­er, she com­posed for very dif­fer­ent instru­men­ta­tions. Van Haegenborgh wrote pieces for sev­er­al spe­cif­ic quar­tets like Zwerm Electric Guitar Quartet, Nordic Affect, an Icelandic quar­tet of peri­od instru­ments, per­cus­sion quar­tet and elec­tron­ics (Squaring the Circle).
Further she wrote solo pieces for vio­lon­cel­lo with crys­tal objects and elec­tron­ics (Benjamin Glorieux) for which she also designed the scenog­ra­phy, the com­pul­sary pieces MA Competition 2021 for 16^th cen­tu­ry melod­ic instru­ments and per­cus­sion, choir pieces for the London exper­i­men­tal choir Musarc, a sound­cape for a per­for­mance by Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe in Momu with opera bal­let Vlaanderen, tri­o’s for lute voice and per­cus­sion, trio for oboe d’amore, piano and tenor, ensem­ble, tri­o’s for French horn, for elec­tric gui­tar vio­lin and piano, recorder and elec­tron­ics, etc. 

Apart from that, she per­forms her own com­po­si­tions for piano with elec­tron­ics. In 2025 she released High Carbon, music for piano and elec­tron­ics at W.E.RF. Records. She used to play in duo with Icelandic harp­si­chordist Gudrun Oskarsdottir, Christian Mendoza (jazz piano), Esther Venrooy (elec­tron­ics), Frederik Leroux (jazz gui­tar) and impro with Tsubasa Hori (Taiko).

Improvisation projects have always been present in her career. She was part of the European Melting Pot in Wroclaw, Istanbul Express in Istanbul with Erdem Helvagioglu, Peking Express in China with Wu Fei, No Choice Toekomstmuziek, ini­ti­at­ed by visu­al artist Dennis Tyfus and so on.

Apart from High Carbon (November 2025) she fin­ished anoth­er record in 2025: Affordances for choir and instru­ments was released in June 2025 (SN Variations). In December a large sym­pho­ny of city sounds was pre­miered at De Singel/​Antwerp with the­atre direc­tor Thomas Verstraeten. All played in real­ly time by 100 cit­i­zens and con­duct­ed by Tom de Cock.

Heleen Van Haegenborgh stud­ied com­po­si­tion at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with Peter Swinnen, piano in Ghent with Daan Vandewalle and her music appeared on the fol­low­ing labels: Entr’acte, El Negocito Records, SNvariation, W.E.R.F. Records, Logos and Het Balanseer.
Her music is pub­lished by Donemus Publishing.