Mathias Coppens (1988) is a Belgian pianist-composer. Recent engagements are a commission for the Royal Ballet of Birmingham, in collaboration with choreographer Miguel Altunaga, premiered in June 2021 at the Repertory Theatre in Birmingham. After a successful London premiere at Sadler's Wells the piece will now go on tour and is accessible to stream through Marquee tv. Recently his orchestral music was played during the opening of the KMSKA, the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Works to be premiered in 2023 are a new music theatre piece for I Solisti and Johnny MUS. In October 2023 ‘Minerals’, an interactive concert experience developed with HoWest and game studio Wired Sheep, will be performed in deSingel and Concertgebouw Brugge with Bryggen Strings.
As composer in residence with deCompagnie Mathias will work together with Lazarus/De Maan and the Flemish Radio Choir. He just finished the score for the documentary ‘Mothers in Ballet’ directed by Eliza Schroeder, featuring dancers from Houston Ballet, New York City Ballet, Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and Tokyo Ballet.
Mathias performs regularly as a lied-accompanist, in duo with sopranos Laurence Servaes and Zofia Hanna and with choir (Flemish Radio Choir), in different chamber music series (f.e. deFilharmonie) or dance productions. As a pianist he played several times with orchestra (Tschaikovsky, Chopin, Beethoven, Gershwin and several Mozart concertos) and as a composer he wrote for some leading Belgian and Dutch ensembles/orchestras such as ‘I Solisti’, Bl!ndman, Brussels Philharmonic, Asko-Schönberg ensemble, Atlas ensemble, Hermes Ensemble, Mosa Trio, Kugoni Trio, Casco Phil, Symphony Orchestra of Flanders, Desguin Quartet, Spiegel Quartet and others. Some of his music was recorded at Capitol studios LA, Warner Brothers studios, East-West Studios, etc.
He is the pianist and together with Michiel Delanghe artistic leader of the ensembles deCompagnie and a founding member of Tetragonist. Both ensembles recorded an album: deCompagnie under the label Phaedra and TetraGonist recorded the Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps of Messiaen (Aliud) which they played on the spot in a tent where the composer wrote the piece during the second world war. With his VZW ‘k Luister he is the artistic director of ‘The Piano Festival’, which had two editions in Amuz, Antwerp. He is also co-founder of Lab Summer Class which already had three editions (Germany, Italy and Portugal).
Mathias graduated with the highest distinction for piano and composition under the supervision of Levente Kende and Wim Henderickx at the conservatory in Antwerp and graduated in composition with ‘excellence’ at the conservatory of Amsterdam where his teachers were Willem Jeths and Wim Henderickx. Mathias graduated at the screen scoring department of the University of Southern California where his professors were Bruce Broughton, Christopher Young, etc.
