Vincent Caers is percussionist and electronic musician. His main interest lies in interdisciplinary projects combining percussion, live electronics and visual arts. As an artistic researcher, he explores new formats for contemporary percussion performance and their impact on the audience’s experience. Vincent obtained master degree’s in percussion, chamber music and contemporary music performance before becoming research assistant at the LUCA School of Arts. He obtained degrees in electronic music at Ircam and Berklee College of Music. He regularly performs as a freelance musician with different ensembles and orchestras.
Bio
Innovation is the leitmotiv in the artistic profile of Vincent Caers. He continuously considers himself as a percussionist from a reflective and critical point of view. He not only questions his artistic output, but his entire musicianship: which knowledge and skills are important for a contemporary musician in a modern and technology-driven art scene?
Living Scores
With Living Scores (LS) Vincent aims at answering this question. LS Learn - a collaboration with percussionist dr. Tom De Cock - is a web platform, created for improving the practice and performance of contemporary music by distributing theoretical insights and practical tools. Next to the musical output, Vincent also developed the project’s website and the software lsl.clicktrack. In his current PhD research LS Live Vincent explores new formats for contemporary percussion performance and examines their impact on the audience’s experience.
Live electronics
Vincent often shares the stage with different musicians, visual artists and dancers. In ‘Worp’ he performs live electronics with musicians Peter Jacquemyn and Jan Pillaert and visual artist Klaas Verpoest. In ‘Sichtlaut’ the group is extended with dancer Geraldo Si. Together with painter Sigrid Tanghe he improvises as an audiovisual duo. For his electronic performances, he created the lsl.lpsr improvisation software. He also performs as a soloist combining percussion and live electronics.
Percussion
As a percussionist, Vincent created the duo ‘Blow’ with saxophone player Andy Dhondt. They collaborated with multiple composers, such as Annelies van Parys, Benjamin Van Esser, Jelle Tassyns and Claude Coppens and premiered multiple works for saxophone and percussion. Blow recorded ‘Coalesce 3’ by Benjamin Van Esser for Champ d’Action and ‘A bâtons rompus’ by Philippe Hurel. Vincent was percussionist in the Verbier Festival Orchestra and member of the Vlaams Sinfonietta ensemble. As a freelance musician he performed with different ensembles and orchestras, such as Ictus, Champ d’Action, Vlaams Sinfonietta, Het kamerorkest, The Bone Society, Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, DeFilharmonie, La Monnaie, Vlaamse Opera, Nationaal Orkest van België, Brussels Philharmonic and Brussels Jazz Orchestra. He performed at festivals such as Ircam’s Manifeste and Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt.
Education
Vincent Caers obtained a master of Arts in percussion cum laude, a master degree chamber music magna cum laude and a post-master degree in Advanced Studies in Contemporary Art Music Performance magna cum laude at the Lemmensinstituut in Leuven. He attended different masterclasses and won apprenticeships with DeFilharmonie and Brussels Philharmonic. He graduated the master-class cultural management at the Antwerp Management School and received a degree in music technology at the Berklee College of Music and at the Ircam in Paris. He is a laureate of the Dexia Axion Classics competition and the Forte competition. He currently holds a research position at the LUCA school of Arts and KU Leuven and teaches percussion at the Academy of Heist-op-den-berg.