Geert Dehoux

Geert Dehoux (Geert Norbertus Maria Dehoux Hadermann (Antwerp, 2 December 1958) is a Flemish pianist and paraphrase composer.

Life

Geert Dehoux grew up in an artistic environment to which he owes his interest in all that is beautiful. Not only outsiders influenced him: first and foremost, it is his parents who familiarized him with various art disciplines, including especially music (and not just classical music). His father, Frans Dehoux, played the violin and was a poet, folklorist, painter, composer, choir leader since he was 16 and a specialist in Gregorian chants. His mother, Lucienne Hadermann, played the piano and was a great admirer of opera and song art. The young Geert played piano, violin, flute, harpsichord and spinet on various occasions. As a child he also learned folk songs from many countries, singing in the choir that his father led and accompanied his mother at the piano. As an adolescent he studied at the Art High schools in Brussels and Antwerp, where he also practiced piano, violin, recorder and declamation. After obtaining several music diplomas, as well as the only Esperanto diploma approved by the Government, he started his career as a teacher at several music academies of the Flemish government and afterwards as a teacher at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in Antwerp, the Art High schools in Antwerp and Brussels and as an Esperanto teacher at the Urban Courses for Languages ​​in Antwerp. In the meantime he studied privately for a short time with Aldo Ciccolini and Daniël Wayenberg (invited by the Fondation Samson François) in Paris.

Work

It is worth mentioning that Geert Dehoux is the only pianist in the history of Belgium who had the honor of receiving the "King's Prize" (Boudewijn of Belgium), awarded to him in 1980 by the Belgian Vocation Foundation. In 1981 he was - for life - elected Benelux International Friendship Ambassador, honorary member of the 'European Piano Teachers Association', U.E.A.-delegate for music and board member of 'La Verda Stelo' in Antwerp. At that time he was also active in the Esperanto movement at both national and international level and published a number of papers on the international language issue. In the early 1980s he gave recitals in the U.S.A., Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, France, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, where he frequently performed for radio and TV. Everywhere he received press approval and overwhelming success with the public. He received, among other things, recommendations and appreciation from great pianists such as Aldo Ciccolini, Georges Cziffra, Nelson Freire, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alexis Weissenberg and Ingrid Haebler. Each time he performed one or more works by Flemish composers during his performances, which was greatly appreciated. After an audition for the Hungarian-French pianist Georges Cziffra, in 1982, he presented him two years in a row to open his international music festival with a piano recital. In 1985 he was invited to receive his diploma of honorary membership of the 'Academia Internacional de Música' from the hands of H.E. the Consul-General of Belgium in Rio de Janeiro. In the same year he was offered a chair at a university in Colombia. As a professor he taught piano (higher level) there for two years. After several years of intensive self-study, he resumed the concert thread from 1987 to 1988: he performed in almost the entire South American continent, often with sold-out concert halls. At the same time he was connected as a translator and cultural advisor to a cultural institution. He then worked as a principal piano teacher, later as an artistic director, at a music conservatory in Colombia, where he and his students quickly gained fame at national level. During the seven years he spent there, Geert Dehoux also taught several master classes at universities, often combined with lectures about music in general and works by Flemish composers in particular. In the course of the nineties he temporarily returned to Belgium and obtained summa cum laude several foreign language diplomas there. After 1988 he retired from the concert stage to devote himself again to intensive piano studies, both on a technical and interpretive level, enriched his general musical knowledge, devoted himself more to refined and bravoure music and did research on unknown and forgotten pearls from the piano literature. As a result, he developed a special interest in the composition of paraphrases.

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