A mandolin orchestra? Never heard of one? Indeed, it's not something you'll see or hear every day... It all began in Brasschaat (near Antwerp), one of the major places for the mandolin in Flanders. Robert Janssens, a student of Frans de Groodt and with him one of the pioneers of the mandolin- and guitar education in Belgium, created in 1953 a school orchestra that in 1955 grew into the "Brasschaats Mandoline-Orkest" (Mandolin Orchestra of Brasschaat), "BMO" in short. Some further information about the orchestra's history is found here.

A mandolin orchestra consists almost exclusively of plucked string instruments: mandolin, mandola, guitar and one bowed string instrument: the double bass. Occasionally these instruments are reinforced with some wind instruments as the flute, oboe or recorder and small percussion. With this sound palette the orchestra plays easy listening music in a surprisingly wide repertory: original compositions for mandolin orchestra, transcriptions and arrangements of light classical pieces, folk music (Greek, Latin-American, Slavic, Italian, Spanish, Eastern, rags, ...) and famous movie themes. Feel free to take a look at our CDs, some audio samples give a slight taste of our possibilities. If you'd like to see us live, please check our concert calendar.

[Note: our website is originally in Dutch, translating new pages and correcting the translation is work in progress.]