composer | conductor | singer | music pedagogue
Hans Helsen [°1989], a Belgian composer, conductor, singer, and music pedagogue, is driven by a profound passion for connecting people of all ages through the power of singing. This passion is not just a part of his work but the very essence that threads through his entire musical journey.
Hans seeks to balance teaching, composing, and performing based on the conviction that these different skills complement each other. He has already written compositions for diverse line-ups but focuses on vocal music. In recent years, he has mainly written for young choirs. Hans won the Koor&Stem Composition Competition in 2011 with the work Parafrasie Paranoica. He is a double laureate in the European Award for Choral Composers (2014 with Missa Brevis and 2020 with Sanctus Amor), organized by the European Choral Association. Music publishers Euprint, Koor&Stem, Stringfun, and Helbling have published Hans' works.
Hans is the tenor, in-house composer, and co-founder of MAVIS, a new and ambitious Belgian a cappella group. Along with his fellow group members Anna Pardo Canedo, Anna Nuytten, Reinhard Andries, and Sander Meersmans, he aims to make vocal music accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Hans teaches music composition at STAP Roeselare. In this school for performing arts and with the Bruges-based family of choirs, he also conducts several choirs with singers of all ages. Additionally, he is responsible for developing and teaching various educational workshops at the Bruges Concertgebouw to introduce all ages to the world of classical music and sound art.