Benoît Mernier is Belgian. He lives and works in Brussels. He approached music through the organ with Firmin Decerf, Jean Ferrard, Joris Verdin and Jean Boyer. A graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Liège and the Conservatory of Lille, he discovered today's music with Claude Ledoux, Henri Pousseur, Bernard Foccroulle, Célestin Deliège and Philippe Boesmans, with whom he studied composition for several years.
He divides his time between teaching, organ recitals and composition.
Teaching
After teaching organ, improvisation, musical analysis and writing in several Higher Schools of Arts in Belgium, he is now professor of organ at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels, and taught composition for two seasons at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel as part of the European Network of Opera Houses (ENOA).
The organist
Benoît Mernier gives organ recitals in many European countries, in Japan, Mexico and Canada. He has recorded several albums, one of which received the Grand Prix de l'Académie du disque Charles Cros. His repertoire spans early music (17th and 18th centuries), romantic and contemporary works. He regularly sits on juries of international competitions (Alkmaar, Chartres, Concours Messiaen Lyon, Dudelange, Lausanne, Toulouse, Orava, Saint-Maurice…).
Several of his works have been awarded by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), the International Rostrum of Composers sponsored by UNESCO, the Royal Academy of Belgium, and the Community of French-language Public Radios.
The most important Belgian composer of our time.XXI Music Publishing · composer catalog
He has been composer-in-residence at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, at the Austrian Carinthischer Sommer festival, and guest of honor at the Festival de Wallonie in 2008.
The operas
His first opera Frühlings Erwachen, commissioned by the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, was premiered there in 2007. It has since been performed at the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg and was the subject in 2015 of a new production by the International Opera Academy, directed by Filip Rathé and staged by Guy Joosten. Cypres has released several albums devoted to his works, including a CD/DVD set of his opera, awarded a Diapason d'Or. A book published by Mardaga (L'Éveil du Printemps, naissance d'un opéra) was dedicated to him.
La Dispute, an opera also commissioned by La Monnaie, was created there under the musical direction of Patrick Davin in a staging by Karl-Ernst and Ursel Herrmann.
The Koussevitzky Foundation and the American Library of Congress commissioned him a new work for the Pro Arte Quartet, recorded in the United States. After a Violin Concerto written for Lorenzo Gatto (Cypres), he wrote a cycle on poems by Emily Dickinson for the La Monnaie Youth Choir and the La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra, along with an Organ Concerto premiered by Olivier Latry at the inauguration of the new organ of the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. These two works earned him the Octaves de la Musique 2019.
The recording of his Pange lingua for organ, performed by himself and released by the German label Aeolus, received a Diapason d'Or.
Recent work
For its 30th anniversary, the Ars Musica festival commissioned him a new work for the Royal Liège Philharmonic Orchestra (2019). At the request of the Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie, Mernier orchestrated César Franck's Chorale No. 2 in B minor (FWV 39) for organ and orchestra (2020). In 2021, he composed the soundtrack for a feature film by director François Pirot. In 2022, he completed Philippe Boesmans's opera On purge Bébé ! following the composer's death. The work was premiered at La Monnaie in December 2022 and revived at the Opéra de Lyon.
His new symphonic work Sur un ciel immense was premiered in January 2025 by the Royal Liège Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Gergely Madaras in concerts in Liège and Brussels.
The same year, he recorded for the Cypres label an album of German Baroque organ works on the new Thomas instrument at Saint-Loup church in Namur, marking his 60th anniversary. The album received positive reviews in the international musical press.
Forthcoming at XXI Music Publishing: the Missa Christi Regis Gentium for choir and organ (45 min).
