Marieke van Ransbeeck

Marieke Van Ransbeeck performs with her bagpipes various national and international folk and baroque projects. She mainly plays the Flemish bagpipes, Baroque Musette and Swedish bagpipes. 

Marieke is the artistic director and manager of her international band Marvara. With this band she won the Flanders Folk Award for "Most Promising Band of 2023".  

Currently she is establishing a name for herself in the Belgian / European music world. In July 2023 she also performed solo bagpipes on the mainstage of the world-famous electronic music festival Tomorrowland. 
In 2021 she was selected by the national radio station Klara as one of "De Twintigers", the most promising musicians of the year. 

Marieke began playing the Flemish bagpipe at the age of eight in Gooik with her teacher Jean-Pierre Van Hees. Passing through the music camp Flanders Ethno as a teenager she understood for certain her calling as a musician. Like Hans Christian Andersen puts it: "Where words fail, music speaks." In 2013 she got the opportunity to study a master in Flemish bagpipes and baroque musette at the early music department of LUCA School of Arts in Leuven. This is currently the only study, on university level, for baroque musette.

After Marieke graduated in 2017 she wanted to deepen herself more into folk music. That's why she continued her studies with the "Nordic Master in Folk Music", the most high-profile program in contemporary folk today. This study took her around the Nordic countries for two years, where she studied at the folk departments of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Kungliga Musikhögskolan in Stockholm, Syddansk Musikkonservatorium in Esbjerg and Ole Bull Akademiet in Voss. She is now working as a freelance musician with various national and international baroque and folk projects.

Picture: ©Pull&Over Photographs