Apolline Degoutte

Apolline Degoutte moved to Brussels in 2014 and, five years later, was awarded a first Master’s degree with first-class honours at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles, where she studied under Baudoin Giaux. She then undertook a post-master’s course in orchestral performance with Valérie Debaele in the Netherlands, before deciding, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to complete her musical studies by simultaneously finishing a teaching master’s degree at the Royal Conservatoire of Liège under Toon Fret, and joining Peter Verhoyen’s piccolo class at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Antwerp.

Driven by a passion for orchestral music, where she truly comes into her own, Apolline Degoutte joined the Opéra Royal de Wallonie Liège as co-principal flute and piccolo in 2022. She also performs on an ad hoc basis as a freelancer with other orchestras such as the Belgian National Orchestra, the Opéra Royal de la Monnaie/De Munt, the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra in Brussels, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in Antwerp, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège, and abroad with the Dutch orchestras Noord Nederland Orkest, Het Residentie, Het Ballet Amsterdam, Philharmonie Zuidnederland, and Ludwig Orkest.

In 2017, she founded the wind quintet EtCaetera, now known as the Brussels Wind Quintet, an ensemble that won the Génération Classique Musiq3 competition in 2021, was a finalist in the Supernova competition in 2022, and was shortlisted for the Carl Nielsen International Chamber Music Competition in 2023 and the ARD Competition in 2024. The ensemble is a member of the “Chamber Music for Europe” association and an artist group of the “Jeunesses Musicales” of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. It also works regularly with other ensembles, including the Trio Spilliart – with whom it recorded a CD in 2021 featuring trios by Jacqueline Fontyn, which won the Prix Caecilia in 2022 – as well as the Méliades Quartet and the Oxalys ensemble. She regularly takes part in off-season chamber music festivals, such as the Festival Armorosa in Brittany and the Festival en Poitou organised by her mentor Guy Danel, as well as the Musica da Camera season, organised by the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège since 2025.

She finally combined her love of chamber music and orchestral music with her interest in teaching by joining the team at the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles in 2022 as a chamber music assistant, and then Toon Fret’s class at LUCA School of Arts Leuven, as a visiting lecturer for competition preparation and orchestral excerpts in 2023.