Arie Van Lysebeth was the President of the Jury of the Queen Elisabeth Competition from 1996 to 2018. He took up the violin at the age of four. He completed his higher education at the Brussels Conservatory in music theory, bassoon, chamber music, and orchestral conducting. Following a competition, he was appointed bassoon soloist of the Belgian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. Two years later, he came joint first in the Prague International Bassoon Contest. He also studied conducting under Bruno Maderna in Salzburg and under Pierre Boulez in Switzerland. Starting in 1970, he conducted the Flemish Chamber Orchestra, both in Belgium and abroad. As a guest conductor, he has appeared with the major Belgian orchestras as well as with symphony orchestras in the United States of America, Argentina, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany. He has performed with many famous soloists, including Igor Oistrakh, José Van Dam, Murray Perahia, and Augustin Dumay. From 1995 to 2004 he was the regular conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Brussels Conservatory, where he taught chamber music for many years (1970-1994) and served as director (1994-2003). From 2004 to 2014, he was the artistic director of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel.

Unsuk Chin was born in Seoul, studied with Ligeti in Hamburg, and is now resident in Berlin. She is a winner of the 2004 Grawemeyer Award for her Violin Concerto and the 2005 Arnold Schoenberg prize. Her output features both electronic and acoustic scores, modern in language, but lyrical and non-doctrinaire in communicative power. She has an acute ear for instrumentation, orchestral colour, and rhythmic imagery. Her works are performed worldwide by major orchestras, contemporary music ensembles and interpreters. She is championed by conductors Kent Nagano, Simon Rattle, Peter Eötvös, David Robertson, Myung-Whun Chung and George Benjamin, and violinists Christian Tetzlaff and Viviane Hagner. The Bavarian State Opera, Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and China Philharmonic have performed her works. Furthermore, she has been programmed by contemporary music ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern and Kronos Quartet. Her music is recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and she publishes exclusively with Boosey&Hawkes. Composer-in-residence with Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, she is also Artistic Director of its Contemporary Music Series since 2006.

After receiving five first prizes from the Paris Conservatory (analysis, aesthetics, orchestration, composition, music history) and attending the computer music Cursus at Ircam, Bruno Mantovani (1974) began an international career. His works have been performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Philharmonie in Cologne, the KKL in Lucerne, La Scala in Milan, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Centre in New York, the Cité de la musique and the Salle Pleyel in Paris.

Faithful to his preferred performers, he collaborates with prestigious soloists (Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Alain Billard, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Antoine Tamestit, Tabea Zimmermann), conductors (Pierre Boulez, Sir Andrew Davis, Peter Eötvös, Laurence Equilbey, Gunter Herbig, Emmanuel Krivine, Susanna Mälkki, Jonathan Nott, Pascal Rophé François-Xavier Roth), ensembles (Accentus, Intercontemporain, TM+) and orchestras (Bamberg Symphony, BBC Cardiff, Chicago Symphony, WDR Cologne, La Chambre Philharmonique, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, Liège Philharmonic, BBC London, Lucerne Academy, Orchestre de Paris, Paris Opera Orchestra, Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France, Sarrebrücken Radio Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, NHK Tokyo, RAI Turin, Sinfonia Varsovia, RSO Vienna).

He has received distinctions from international competitions (Stuttgart in 1999, Unesco Composer Tribune in 2001), the Hervé Dugardin and Georges Enesco prizes as well as the "Grand Prix" from the Sacem in 2000, 2005 and 2009, the André Caplet and Institute Prizes in 2005, the new talent prize from the SACD in 2007, the Belmont prize from the Forberg-Schneider Foundation that same year, a "Victoire de la Musique" for composer of the year in 2009, the Claudio Abbado prize from the Berlin Philharmonic and the international music press prize in 2010, as well as numerous awards for his recordings (including several "coups de Coeur" from the Charles Cros Academy, a "Choc de l'année" from the Monde de la musique, and chosen as one of the best recordings of 2008 from the New York Times). He became "Chevalier des Arts et Lettres" in January 2010. He was in residency at the Herrenhaus at Edenkoben in 1999, at the October in Normandy festival in 2001, at Bologna as part of the "Villa Médicis hors les murs" program sponsored by AFAA in 2002, at the French Academy of Rome (Villa Médicis) in 2004 and 2005, at the Besançon festival between 2006 and 2008, and with the National Orchestra of Lille between 2008 and 2011. The Musica festival, where he has been special guest artist since 2001, dedicated a portrait to him in 2006.

Starting in 2010 he began an extended collaboration with the Paris Opera (premier of the ballet Siddharta during the first season, and an opera based on the life of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova in March 2011). Inspired by the relationships linking music with other forms of artistic expression, he has collaborated with novelists Hubert Nyssen and Eric Reinhardt, librettists Christophe Ghristi and François Regnault, chef Ferran Adrià, choreographers Jean-Christophe Maillot and Angelin Preljocaj, and film maker Pierre Coulibeuf. His work is often a reflection on the history of Western classical music (Bach, Gesualdo, Rameau, Schubert, Schumann) or popular forms (jazz, Eastern music).

Bruno Mantovani is also a conductor, and regularly conducts contemporary music ensembles (Accentus, Alternance, Cepheus, Intercontemporain, Sospeso, TM+) as well as the National Orchestra of Lille.

He is the headmaster of the Paris Conservatory since September 2010. His works are published by Editions Henry Lemoine.

Benoît Mernier (1964, Belgium) has studied the organ and improvisation with Firmin Decerf and harpsichord with Charles Koenig. He continued his studies at Conservatoire Royal de Musique in Liège with Jean Ferrard, whose assistant he was for several years. He also studied organ with Bernard Foccroulle and with Jean Boyer at the National Regional Conservatoire of Lille. Along with the organ, Benoît Mernier has devoted himself to composition. In this field, he was able to profit from the counsels of Claude Ledoux, Henri Pousseur, Luca Francesconi, Emmanuel Nunes, Bernard Foccroulle, and Célestin Deliège. He studied the composition with Philippe Boesmans.

His organ work Artifices was the prizewinner of the 1990 UNESCO International Composers' Tribune. In 1995 the Royal Academy of Belgium awarded him the Fuérison Prize for his Blake Songs for voice and chamber orchestra. His Clarinet Quintet was awarded the Paul Gilson Prize of the French-speaking Public Radios in 1999.

His works have been performed at leading festivals as Ars Musica, Présences, Wien Modern, Gaudeamus, World Music Days (ISCM), Prague Premieres, and have been played by groups and performers such as the Arditti Quartet, the Ensemble Modern, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, the Monnaie Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France, the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Belgium, the Namur Chamber Choir, the Danel Quartet, the ensembles Ictus and Musiques Nouvelles, the Danel Quartet, the Trio Medicis, the Trio Fibonacci, Oxalys, and Michaël Schönwandt, Bertrand de Billy, Pascal Rophé, Jonas Alber, Ronald Zollman Pierre Bartholomée, Lorraine Vaillancourt, Patrick Davin, Georges-Elie Octors, …

His first opera « Frühlings Erwachen » was commissioned by the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels) (World premiere : Brussels : March 2007- French premiere : Opéra du Rhin/Strasbourg : September 2008). His second opera « La dispute » after Marivaux will be performed in 2013 at La Monnaie (stage production by Karl-Ernst and Ursel Herrmann).

His works are featured in several CDs released on the Cypres label, one of them having won the Snepvangers Prize awarded in 2001 by the Belgian Musical Press Union and the CD/DVD of his opera is awarded "Diapason d'Or".

Benoît Mernier lives in Brussels. He teaches improvisation and the organ at the Institut supérieur de Musique et de Pédagogie in Namur. Since 2007, he is member of Royal Academy of Belgium (Fine Arts section.

Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer, has lived in Paris since 1982. Among her major works are a violin concerto, "Graal théâtre", written for Gidon Kremer in 1995, two works written for Dawn Upshaw: "Château de l’âm"e, composed during the Salzburg Festival in 1996, and "Lonh", performed the same year during the Wien Modern Festival.
She has written several opera's. " L’Amour de loin" was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival and the Théâtre du Châtelet and has been created in Salzburg in 2000 and performed throughout Europe and the United States. "Adriana Mater", on a original libretto by Amin Maalouf, merging the dark realities of the present and dream, was staged by Peter Sellars at Opéra Bastille in march 2006 and in Helsinki and Santa Fe in 2008. "Emilie" has been premiered by Karita Mattila in March 2010 at the Opéra de Lyon and the Amsterdam Opera.
Kaija Saariaho has also signed a vast oratorio, "La Passion de Simone", commission by the Wien Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Barbican and Lincoln Centers. "D’om le vrai sens", her clarinet concerto for Kari Krikku, was commissioned by The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra - who gave the first performance in September 2010 in Finlandia Hall, Helsinki conducted by Sakari Oramo -, and the BBC, Fundação Casa da Musica, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Radio France.
She has been awarded with numerous distinctions, among which the Italia Prize, the Ars Electronica Prize, the Nordic Music Prize, the Grawemeyer Award and the Shock Prize. In 2008 she was named Composer of the year by Musical America.

Frederik van Rossum was born in Brussels. Since he was awarded the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1965, his works have won many international awards. His Réquisitoire for brass and percussion, for example, won First Prize at the International Rostrum of Composers backed by UNESCO in Paris in 1981. His First Violin Concerto was the compulsory work at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1980 and was subsequently the subject of five different recordings. In 1988 his Aria a modo di vocalizzo was the compulsory work for the semi-final of the Queen Elisabeth Competition for Singing. A brilliant orchestrator, van Rossum has written a number of works for orchestra with and without soloists. He has also composed chamber music and music for the stage and for opera, along with an extensive and varied range of works for the piano ; he is himself an excellent pianist and his works for the instrument occupy a central place in his oeuvre. Frederik van Rossum is a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique. From 1995 to 2000 he was Composer in Residence of the Festival of Flanders.