Julien Libeer & Adam Laloum
Biography Julien Libeer & Adam Laloum
Julien Libeer
Born in 1987 near Brussels, Belgium, Julien Libeer’s earliest musical memory was the famous documentary on the recording of West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein. The piano, which he took up at age six, quickly became the faithful companion for expressing a love of music that thrives as much on opera, orchestra, and chamber music as on the piano repertoire. For five decisive years, French-Polish pedagogue Jean Fassina was the patient, demanding, wise teacher that any aspiring musician should have the chance to encounter. This experience was followed by the equally intense collaboration with Maria João Pires at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, whose advice and support strongly influenced Julien’s views over the last few years.
Julien has performed at the Barbican Hall (London), Auditorio Nacional (Madrid), Palau de la Musica (Barcelona), Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), and is a regular guest of the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels) and Concertgebouw Amsterdam. In addition, other tours have taken him to Japan (Tokyo, Sumida Tryphony Hall), Lebanon (Beirut Chants festival), Turkey (Ankara Music Festival) and the US (Miami International Piano Festival). He is an artist in residence at Flagey.
He has performed with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Brussels Philharmonic, Belgian National Orchestra, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia and New Japan Philharmonic; under conductors including Trevor Pinnock, Jun Märkl, Michel Tabachnik, Augustin Dumay, Hervé Niquet, Joshua Weilerstein and Enrique Mazzola. His dedication to the works of Dinu Lipatti have resulted in warm collaborations with the Bucarest Radio Orchestra, among others.
An accomplished chamber musician, he works on a regular basis with Augustin Dumay, Camille Thomas, Frank Braley, Maria João Pires and Lorenzo Gatto, with whom he has performed the complete Beethoven violin sonatas over several seasons (at venues including Wigmore Hall, Louvre and the Concertgebouw Amsterdam).
Highlights of last seasons have included invitations of the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Wigmore Hall, Flagey (Brussels) and the Steinway International Concert Series (Cardiff). He was a guest at the Enescu Festival, the Beirut Chants Festival, the Miami International Piano Festival and has performed chamber music concerts at De Doelen (Rotterdam), the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Charleroi) and the Théâtre des Abesses (Paris).
Other recent highlights include the completion of Julien’s complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas recording with Lorenzo Gatto (Alpha Classics), which won the Diapason d’or de l’Année 2016; his debut concerto album featuring Lipatti’s Concertino for piano and orchestra and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat major, KV 595 (Les Métamorphoses Orchestra and conductor Raphaël Feye, on Evil Penguin Records). In addition, he was the recipient of an Echo Klassik Award in 2017 for his album with cellist Camille Thomas. Julien has then moved on to sign with Harmonia Mundi International, releasing an adventurous Bach –Bartók in 2020, followed in 2022 by A Well-tempered Conversation, a conceptual take on Bach’s iconic Well-Tempered Keyboard.
Julien Libeer has studied with Daniel Blumenthal (Royal Conservatory of Brussels), Jean Fassina (Paris) and Maria João Pires, and is an associate artist of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, where he also specialized in chamber music with the members of the Artemis Quartet. Furthermore, he has received the advice of Dmitry Bashkirov, Alfred Brendel, Nelson Delle Vigne-Fabbri, Jura Margulis and Gerhard Schulz (Alban Berg Quartet).
Beyond concertizing, Julien is driven to initiate or collaborate in projects which are rooted in the idea that music, far beyond its esthetic value, can be a force of change for anyone willing to listen. Amongst these projects was Julien hosting a Belgian TV series, that made a case for musical storytelling. He furthermore hosts the Salon Libeer concert series at the Bruges Concertgebouw, in which he joins a fellow musician and a speaker (e.g. philosopher, historian, author), as well as the lecture series Dead or Alive, a philosophical exploration of the shifts in classical music making (in collaboration with LUCA School of Arts and the Catholic University of Leuven.
As the artistic director of the Singing Molenbeek project, he supervises high level choir rehearsals in the primary schools of a Brussels suburb famous for all kinds of wrong reasons. It is Julien’s hope that introducing these children to music, with all its demands and rewards, will help them grow personally and socially.
Adam Laloum
is among the best French pianists of the moment. A laureate at the 2009 Clara-Haskil competition, he was proclaimed “Instrumentalist of the Year” during the 2017 edition of the “Victoires de la musique classique”, a gala held in Paris and broadcasted live on television. Moreover, he recently signed an exclusive contract with Sony Classical International, with the first CD to be issued in the spring of 2018.
Adam Laloum was born in Toulouse in 1987. He studied the piano first at his native city’s conservatory, then in Paris under Michel Béroff starting in 2002, and finally at Lyon’s Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse.
Laloum has performed with great formations including the Mariinsky Orchestra (director: Valery Gergiev), Orchestre du festival de Verbier (director: Charles Dutoit), Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (director: Sir Roger Norrington) and Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse (director: Tugan Sokhiev). His German debut included performances with Radio-Sinfonieorchester SWR Stuttgart directed by Nicholas Milton and at Berlin’s Philharmonic Hall with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin directed by Nicholas Collon. Moreover, Laloum has given solo performances at such famous locations as Wigmore Hall (London), Herkulessaal (Munich), Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Paris), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels) and Tonhalle (Zurich), and participated in a series of music festivals in Switzerland (Verbier, Lucerne), France (Colmar, La Roque d’Anthéron, Festival de Piano aux Jacobins, Folles Journées de Nantes) and Germany (Klavier-Festival Ruhr, Rheingau Musik Festival, Schwetzinger SWR Festspielen, Kissinger Sommer, Festspielen Mecklenburg-Vorpommern).
A passionate chamber musician, Adam Laloum founded the Les Esprits trio in 2014 together with violinist Mi-sa Yang and cellist Victor Julien-Laferrière. The ensemble has played at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and also signed an exclusive contract with Sony Classical International. Last but not least, Laloum is also the artistic director of Les Pages Musicales de Lagrasse, a chamber music festival that he founded in 2015.
