Biography

Coryn, Roland (born December 21, 1938 at Courtrai). Belgian composer of mostly orchestral, chamber, choral and piano music that has been performed throughout Europe.

He studied at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Ghent, where he won several First Prizes as a performer ( pianist and violist) and as a composer.

After being active as a violin- and a piano teacher, he became headmaster of the Music Academy 'Peter Benoit' of his hometown Harelbeke. At the same time and until his retirement in 1997, he was consecutively professor of chamber music, harmony, counterpoint, fugue and musical composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Ghent.

At the start of his musical career, he was mainly active as a performer. But after a few years he devoted himself entirely to composition and teaching. During this period as a professor of composition at the Conservatory of Music in Ghent, he conducted 'The New Music Ensemble', which premiered many Flemish new pieces and also notable works by Louis Andriessen, Maurizio Kagel, Kaija Saariaho and Giacinto Scelsi among other composers.

His honors include the Tenuto Prize (1973), the Jef Van Hoof Prize (1974), the Koopal Prize for his chamber music (1986) and the Visser-Neerlandia Prize in Den Haag (1999) for the whole of his compositional oeuvre. He is a permanent member of the Class of Arts of The Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts since 1993. In 2019, he was appointed as honorary member.

In cooperation with the city council of his hometown, Harelbeke, he organized from 2000 to 2012 a Biannual International Composition Contest,'Harelbeke, Town of Music' for new symphonic band music. In alternation with the previous contest, he was the curator of a Music Biannual, a series of concerts on a prefixed theme which was always devoted to the music history of Flanders and by extension of Belgium.