The new concert hall at the Music Chapel
World famous music school Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth in Brussels inaugurated yesterday, 27 January, the new De Launoit Wing. The new wing provides a concert hall with 250 seats, 20 additional housing studios, 3 new music, rehearsal and recording studios as well as new living areas.
Seventy-five years after the opening of the Music Chapel this marks the start of a new page in the history of the Music Chapel, a public utility foundation since 2008. Indeed, this project imagined by Eugène Ysaÿe and Queen Elisabeth and realized in 1939 by Paul de Launoit was entirely rethought in 2004 and now focuses on two main axes, high-level training in six disciplines (voice, violin, piano, cello, viola and chamber music) and professional insertion through a network of cultural partners.
Six leading classical musicians are accompanying the Music Chapel and its young artists in 2014-15: José van Dam, Augustin Dumay, Maria João Pires, Gary Hoffman, Miguel Da Silva and the Artemis Quartet. Each year the Music Chapel welcomes about 60 young talents in residence, both from Belgium and abroad (22 nationalities in 2014-15). The Music Chapel’s operating budget is currently in the order of 2.5 to 3 million euro per year, 80% of which is financed by the private sector (foundations, corporations, private patronage, own revenue) and 20% by public aid (the European Union, Belgium’s Federal Scientific Policy, the Ministry of Education of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, the National Lottery).
