About Charlotte Messiaen

During her studies in law and sociology of leisure (ULB), Charlotte Messiaen pursued her musical training at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels.

She then went on to study the structures of Hungarian musical education in Budapest at the Franz Liszt Academy where she discovered the world of choral singing under the direction of Gábor Ugrin.

Since then she has taught music in nursery and primary schools as well as in academies and has provided numerous teacher training courses. She was professor of methodology at the IMEP, the Higher Institute of Music and Pedagogy of Namur and adviser to the Minister of Education of the French Community between 1985 and 1988. President of the Kodály Association of the French Community of Belgium for 25 years.

Currently, she teaches music at the primary school of Sombreffe and provides master classes in music pedagogy in Belgium and abroad.

In 1999, she founded the “Petit Conservatoire du Brabant Wallon”, which was inspired by the example of Zoltán Kodály and organized numerous children’s choirs.

In September 2004, Charlotte Messiaen founded the Chorale Universitaire de Louvain, which she directed until December 2015.

She also founded and has directed for nearly thirty years the Ensemble Vocal du Brabant Wallon, a youth choir in Louvain-la-Neuve, as well as the Ensemble Vocal Kodály, a women’s choir. She also directs the Petits Chanteurs de Sombreffe and the Ensemble vocal Artemiss, made up of former choristers of the Ensemble Vocal du Brabant Wallon.

All these activities led her to forge many links between Hungarian and Belgian cultural circles and thus Charlotte Messiaen was awarded the Hungarian Gold Cross of Merit in 2018 by the President of the Hungarian Republic, Mr. János Áder.