Benoît Mernier was born in Belgium in 1964 and lives and works in Brussels.
He studied composition with Philippe Boesmans and organ with Firmin Decerf, Jean Ferrard, and Jean Boyer.
He divides his time between teaching, performing as an organist, and composing.
After teaching organ, improvisation, musical analysis, and composition at several Belgian conservatories and higher arts institutions, he is now Professor of Organ at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. He also teaches composition at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel as part of the European Network of Opera Academies (ENOA). He is a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium.
Benoît Mernier has performed organ recitals in numerous European countries, as well as in Japan, Mexico, and Canada. He has made several recordings, one of which received the Grand Prix of the Charles Cros Academy. His repertoire ranges from early music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Romantic and contemporary works.
Several of his compositions have received awards from the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), the UNESCO-sponsored International Rostrum of Composers, the Royal Academy of Belgium, and the French-Language Public Radio Community, among others.
The Cyprès label has released several recordings devoted to his music, including a CD/DVD box set of his first opera, which was awarded a Diapason d’or (www.cypres-records.com). His recording of Pange Lingua for organ, performed by the composer himself and released by the German label Aeolus, also received a Diapason d’or.
A book dedicated to his work, L’Éveil du Printemps, naissance d’un opéra (Spring Awakening: The Birth of an Opera), was published by Mardaga.
His music is performed throughout Europe and the United States and has been commissioned by institutions and festivals including Présences (Radio France), Wien Modern, the Koussevitzky Foundation and the Library of Congress, Opéra national du Rhin, Ars Musica, the Liège Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (OPRL), La Monnaie, Bozar Music, Prague Premières, and Carinthischer Sommer.
Following the death of Philippe Boesmans, he completed the opera On purge Bébé ! and also composed the score for François Pirot’s feature film Ailleurs, si j’y suis (Let's Get Lost).
The premiere of his third opera, Bartleby, based on Herman Melville’s novella, with a libretto by Sylvain Fort, took place in May 2026 at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège. It crowns a substantial catalogue that includes several concertos, among them one written for organist Olivier Latry, as well as orchestral and choral works, chamber music, and numerous compositions for solo organ.
Benoît Mernier is titular organist of the Church of Notre-Dame du Sablon and curator of the organ at the Palais des Beaux-Arts (Bozar) in Brussels.
Photo : © Lia Navarrete