(pronounced Víhl-koe Bráh-oo-ers) is a composer, choral conductor and teacher of music from The Netherlands. He studied choral conducting at the Music Academy of Arnhem and the Liszt Academy in Budapest, and from 1989 to 2016 he conducted the Monteverdi Kamerkoor Utrecht, with whom he made recordings and earned top honors in the Dutch Choir Festival’s mixed choir category in 1997 and 2000.
For many years he worked with the monks of De Achelse Kluis, a Cistercian monastery in Belgium, to improve their chant. He has done the same for the monks of Saint Benedict Abbey in Still River, MA, where he has been invited several times. In these workshops, Brouwers gives the monks an opportunity to improve their technique and voices for the purpose of making their prayer in chant more pleasing to God.
Brouwers treats his work with children in the same way he does with adults: with humor and imagery. From 1994 to 2013 he was the director of the Ward Center Holland, which provides courses in the Ward Method to other music teachers. His work with children inspired him to write Words with Wings, an instructor manual with companion children's workbook and CD. Also available is his songbook for Ward Method lessons, Now I Walk in Beauty.
“His teaching is always new and fresh and filled with metaphors of all sorts. You won’t hear about the mouth and the lungs or actual body parts, and you hear little at all about what is on the page from which you are singing; instead you hear about birds, flames, eggs, paintings, houses, relationships, emotions – these all figure into his special way of enticing singers to go beyond reading what is on the page and present their sound as something magical. ” ~ Jeffrey Tucker
Internationally, Brouwers has taught workshops on Gregorian chant in Auburn, Alabama; Still River, Massachusetts; and Pamplona, Spain. He has given Ward courses in The Netherlands, Germany and in the USA. From 2005 to 2018 Brouwers taught chant and polyphony in the yearly Sacred Music Colloquium, organized by the Church Music Association of America.
In 2016 Wilko Brouwers founded the first Gregorian Circle in Utrecht, The Netherlands. A Gregorian Circle is a group of people who meet every month and study and sing Gregorian repertoire that belongs to the liturgical season. Brouwers teaches the basics of chant interpretation in a way which engages both beginners and experienced singers of chant alike. This example has been followed by colleagues, and at the moment there are ten Gregorian Circles all over the country.
Wilko Brouwers gives lessons in choral conducting and composing in his own country and abroad. His website (in Dutch) is found here: https://wilkobrouwers.nl.
