Veertig jaar geleden: Dominique Verkinderen promoveert met studie over het Van Crombrugghe's Genootschap

Dominique Verkinderen, de vrouw van Guy Verhofstadt, is reeds van bij de aanvang lid van het Collegium Vocale van Philippe Herreweghe. Ze is ook al jaren secretaris en casting director van het koor.

The Belgian soprano, Dominique Verkinderen, studied Latin and Greek at the Grammar School ‘Sint Bavo Humaniora’. One year after the foundation of Collegium Vocale Gent in 1970 by Philippe Herreweghe, she already joined this Baroque Ensemble at the age of 15 as soprano singer. She completed her History Studies at the University of Gent in 1978 (she wrote the study ‘Het Van Crombrugghe’s Genootschap van 1857-1875’ Gent Liberaal Archief 1988).

After completing her studies, Dominique Verkinderen started working for Philippe Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent being responsable for the organisation and administration. Nowadays she is soprano singer and also responsable for the casting of the choir- and orchestra members, as well as for the soloists, wherefore she organises auditions 4 times a year all around Europe.

She studied singing with Peter Kooy (Amsterdam) and Liane Jespers (Antwerp). With Collegium Vocale Gent and Ensemble Vocal Européen, Dominique Verkinderen has recorded more than eighty CD’s and travelled all over the world to South America, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Japan, Australia, and the USA as well as to the most European Countries. She gives on the average sixty concerts a year with Philippe Herreweghe and other conductors as Iván Fischer, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Bernard Haitink, Ton Koopman, Marcus Creed, Paul Van Nevel and Peter Phillips. She had a series of staged performances of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in London, Paris, Brussels and New York with René Jacobs and the famous American choreographer Trisha Brown. Her favourite music is Renaissance Music, J.S. Bach, Purcell and Monteverdi. (Source: The Artist, september 2017, contributed by Dominique Verkinderen.)