Biography of Adrien Tyberghein
Adrien Tyberghein is a double bassist, composer, and improviser. His singular artistic path weaves together written and improvised music, contemporary jazz, world traditions, and stage creation.
Trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, Arts², and the Didier Lockwood School, he developed an intimate relationship with the double bass early on, quickly choosing to approach it beyond its traditional roles. After performing with various ensembles and institutions, including the Opéra national de Paris, he decided to leave the orchestral framework to fully devote himself to developing his own artistic language.
It was at this turning point that he began to see the double bass as a solo and universal voice. He made it the core of a personal language that is free and open to the world. For him, the instrument became a true vehicle for travel—an exploratory space of sound through which he seeks worlds, timbres, states, and memories. His playing reveals multiple voices, oscillating between breath, pulse, texture, silence, and resonance.
Alongside his classical path, Adrien Tyberghein collaborates with artists from the contemporary and world music scenes, notably within Ibrahim Maalouf’s Free Spirit Ensemble, and he co-founded the duo Dyad with composer and accordionist Didier Laloy. These experiences nurture a practice deeply rooted in improvisation, lyricism, trance, and a search for meaning.
He also develops a unique solo project, Seul Contre Basse, combining a double bass recital with text and staging. At the crossroads of concert and performance, this format explores solitude, memory, silence, and light, in an intimate quest for presence and truth.
His work follows a dual approach: an exploration of electronic textures in service of sonic storytelling, and an in-depth acoustic research into the expressive possibilities of the double bass.
A committed pedagogue, Adrien Tyberghein is a professor of classical double bass at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and teaches improvisation at Arts² – Royal Conservatory of Mons, where he transmits both the rigor of tradition and the boldness of free creation.
His current project, Adrien Tyberghein Trio – ODYSSEY, marks a foundational step in his journey. In this formation, the double bass becomes the narrator of an inner voyage, crossing modern jazz, classical music, rock, electronic music, and world traditions. ODYSSEY is conceived as a poetic and sensory journey—a path between shadow and light, roots and horizons, love and rebirth.
Adrien plays a Jean Auray 5-string double bass, a Laurent Demeyere 5-string double bass, and uses bows by Boris Fritsch and Carbow.
Press
- ‘An imagination in freewheel. Adrien Tyberghein is a brilliant UFO. Alone, not “against” but “with” his enormous instrument, he transforms it into the beating pulse of the world through live looping, layering of pre-recorded sounds, and the use of all bowing, striking, and rubbing techniques, turning the unheard into pure poetry. (…) The musician took his audience on a journey, spoke to them, even made them sing—quite in tune, enough to join the loop. A joy.’ – La Libre Belgique (BE)
- ‘Let us also note the presence of the young double bassist Adrien Tyberghein. His brilliant bow revives a classical universe that has clearly been refreshed. An intense personality that sparks this unexpected fusion’ – Radio France (FR)
- ‘He is one of those virtuosos who, once the instrument is in hand, hypnotizes you. Stepping outside the box and exploring everything is Adrien Tyberghein’s leitmotif […], a novel and ambitious approach to music and the arts’ – La Voix du Nord (FR)