Arnould Massart

Arnould Massart is the head of the Jazz Department of the Conservatoire royal de Bruxelles and teaches jazz harmony and jazz rhythm. His pedagogical approach, based on real-time practice, is reasoned and systematic and aims at providing the students with the musical tools for self-expression and creativity. The musical styles studied are as diverse as they are in jazz history from its beginning until now.

Arnould Massart is classically trained and self-taught. Fascinated by all forms of language, he graduated in Germanic Philology in 1978. His eagerness for knowledge and his taste for research have kept him in a permanent learning process. He further trained musically in analysis and composition at Goldsmith College and Morley College in London, at the Royal Conservatory in Mons, and with Maurcio Kagel and Luciano Berio.

His jazz trio Three To Get Ready released his first album in 1985. Another album, in duet with Charles Loos, came out a few years later. Arnould Massart has worked as an arranger for various orchestral bands like the NDR big band, the BRT Jazz Orkest, and ACT big band. In 1985, he won the SABAM Prize of the Year of Music for his big-band composition Lifestrings. In 1988, he became the International C.R.P.L.F. Jazz Competition laureate for his 3-pianos version of Laurentide Waltz by Oscar Peterson. Three years later, he composed Avogadro, a substantial musical fresco for a 10-piece band and released his first solo album: "À l’improviste".

Arnould Massart has been very active in the field of French pop. He has been musical director for the famous singer Maurane, produced albums and accompanied her for more than 20 years. He also composed, arranged and produced for artists such as Vaya Con Dios, Khaled, Ozark Henry and many others.

Beside his artistic career, Arnould Massart also developed an original educational approach. In 1990, he created a "Jazz Rhythm" class at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and gave numerous rhythm workshops. He was then hired to provide a continuing training in rhythm and rhythm pedagogy to the music teachers of the French-speaking part of Belgium. Meanwhile, he founded the "Rhythm Workshops" (Les Ateliers du Rythme), a society developing an "alternative approach to music teaching aiming at reinstating into musical practice its significant relationship with body experience". In music schools, his original approach led to the creation of a new class called "Pratique des rythmes musicaux du monde" that is now part of the curriculum.

In 1992, he met in Paris the physician and psychoanalyst Jacques Donnars with whom he started researching the relationships between geomantic figures and rhythms. This meeting was the beginning of a long quest for the hidden dimension of sound and music. Arnould Massart then certified in "NADABRAHMA Music Therapy" with Sri Vemu Mukunda (India), traveled regularly to the USA to study with Don Campbell at both the "Mystery"- and the "Transformational School of Sound", and completed a two-year training in "Cross-cultural music therapy" with Pat Moffitt Cook in Seattle. Since 2002, he has been organizing trainings in sound and music healing in Belgium and has translated into French Pat Moffitt Cook’s book "Music Healers of Indigenous Cultures" (Open Ear Press – 2004).

In the field of music education, he published the bilingual book "Pratiquer l’harmonie jazz / Praticing Jazz Harmony" (Paris – 2013) and wrote many articles on rhythm teaching (to be found at rythme.be).