Annelien Van Wauwe - About

As an honoured winner of a 2018 BBT Award, I would like to express my deep gratitude towards BBT. The award has not only offered me crucial financial support to enable me to reach many artistic goals, such as my first solo recording for Pentatone, but has also blessed me with feedback, exchange and advice about my career from a highly qualified and charismatic team. I sincerely thank each one of you for your continuous support, your infinite trust and confidence in me as an artist and for giving the music that I care for so deeply a chance to develop and be heard.

Belgian clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe balances a solo career with her profound interest in chamber music. Founder of the Belgian chamber ensemble Carousel and the woodwind quintet Breeze, her chamber collaborators have included fellow BBT alumni such as the Aris and Leonkoro Quartets and the Amatis Trio. Her interest in contemporary music continues beyond her BBT commissioning, with new clarinet concertos featured regularly in her concerts.

Alongside practicalities such as coaching, photographs, instrument repairs and the restoration of a basset clarinet, Annelien’s creative BBT projects included a recording, a major concerto commission and two commissioned transcriptions. The latter, by Jelle Tassyns of works by Pierné and Widor, were featured on Annelien’s debut CD for Pentatone, Belle époque, an album which won her Germany’s foremost classical music prize, Opus Klassik Young Artist of the Year.

Annelien’s major commission using her BBT award fund was Wim Henderickx’s Sutra, a concerto for basset clarinet, electronics and orchestra. Inspired by her twin passions – music and yoga – Henderickx used the Yoga Sutras (the first scriptures of Yoga) as his guiding light. Although Henderickx sadly passed away shortly after the premiere, an interview with him features on The Gift of Music, BBT’s short film about commissioning new work.

Annelien was supported with a BBT Award between 2018 and 2022.

For a current biography please visit sonoramusic.eu

Press Releases: Belle Époque – Music for Clarinet from a Golden Age / Opus Klassik Award / Wim Henerickx Sutra

Photographs by Joëlle Van Autreve