Guitarist Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, born in Antwerp, Belgium, is a committed performer of the music of today. In addition to a master degree in guitar performance at the conservatory of Ghent, where he studied with Tom Pauwels, he received a 2nd master degree in Contemporary Performance Practice from the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where he studied with David Starobin and Mark Stewart. To help him realize this program he received a fellowship from the Belgian American Education Foundation.

Kobe is currently a member of the electric guitar-quartet Zwerm, which he co-founded in 2007, and the Nadar Ensemble. As a freelance guitarist he performed with several groups and ensembles such as the Ictus ensemble in Brussels, ensembles 2E2M and Multilatérale in Paris, and in New York with the Wet Ink Ensemble, Talea and in a tour celebrating Helmut Lachenmann’s 75th birthday with Signal Ensemble a.o.

As a soloist he released his first solo-album “Give my Regards to 116th Street” on the New York label Carrier Records in february 2015, receiving critical acclaim in Wire Magazine (issue 374, april 2015) a.o. In 2017 he created the solo project “No [more] Pussyfooting” with live arrangements of music by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, which he toured extensively in several international festivals and venues. Kobe is currently involved in an artistic research project on the music of Anthony Braxton at the Conservatory of Antwerp. He also forms the guitar duo Oh Mensch with Matthias Koole, with whom he was a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.