The Belgian conductor and musicologist Jan Caeyers is one of the foremost Beethoven specialists in Europe. He started his conducting career as Claudio Abbado’s assistant at the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, where he also worked in close collaboration with Bernard Haitink and Pierre Boulez.

In October 2010, he debuted at deSingel in Antwerp with a new Beethoven orchestra he founded: Le Concert Olympique. With this orchestra, he has performed in Europe’s major concert halls, including the Philharmonie in Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He was also a guest conductor in various orchestras, choirs and opera houses in Europe.

Until 2003 Jan Caeyers headed and conducted the Beethoven Academy as artist in residence at deSingel in Antwerp, the international art campus of Flanders (Belgium). With the Beethoven Academy, Jan Caeyers performed in the major concert halls of Europe.

Jan Caeyers is a professor emeritus at the University of Leuven and a member of the board of the Stiftung Beethoven-Haus Bonn. His years of research on Beethoven and hands-on expertise as a conductor inspired him to write a much-talked-about Beethoven biography, published in 2009. The 2012 German translation immediately became a bestseller. In 2020, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, an English edition of this authoritative book appeared in America, endorsed by and produced in close collaboration with the Beethoven-Haus Bonn.

Jan Caeyers collaborated on several documentaries about Beethoven (including for the BBC, ARTE, ZDF and Austrian television). In the spring of 2020, he had his own evening radio show on Belgian radio station Klara, leading to a top-rated podcast.