Marc Grauwels
Flute
Marc Grauwels is undoubtedly one of the Belgian flautists most catching the limelight today. His eclecticism as an international soloist has inspired a lot of composers from all over the world who wrote especially for him or associated him to the first performance of their creations. More recently, the Greek composer Yannis Markopoulos wrote for him his new concerto for flute that was played as one of the opening musics for the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. Even before having finished his musical studies in his country he made his orchestral debute, aged only nineteen, with the Flemish Opera. In 1976 he joined the Monnaie Theatre in Brussels as piccolo solo (the Belgian National Opera House) which he left in 1978 to become first flute soloist in the Symphonic Orchestra of the Belgian radio and television. He stayed for ten years whilst being chosen for the same position in 1986 at the foundation of the famous “World Orchestra” directed by Carlo-Maria Giulini. His career as a soloist was to soar in an impressive way from then on which would entail his definitive departure from the orchestra in 1987. In the same period he taught for fifteen years at th Royal Conservatory of Brussels and today he holds a chair as titular professor at the Royal Conservatory of Mons. In February 2001 following an Asian tour the world management of Naxos in Hong Kong decided to confide to him a whole collection in their catalogue entitled “The Flute Collection”. For the coming years this Marc Grauwels collection will bring out thirty CDs. (15 Naxos CDs are already available on the world market.). Amply gifted by nature with a genial and enthusiastic character he does not refrain from multiplying very diverse musical experiences and readily moves to and fro between e.g. Piazzolla and Mozart and between Bach and Ravi Shankar. With a minimum of 100 concerts a year all around the world, more than 15.000 pages devoted to him on the Web and a discography listing more than 60 CDs as a soloist performer, Marc Grauwels has shown that the right artistic approach does pave the way these days for a flutist’s tremendous public success.