Nederlands About Us
Established in 1994, Golden River Music aimed in these first years to publish new educational repertoire. And also from the beginning, we decided it should be our challenge to concentrate on the furtherance of Belgian composers.
There is a lot of talent in our small country named Belgium, and this message we want to convey more than ever, together with our authors. We still offer offer a comprehensive range of printed educational music, but we expanded with concert music for soloist and ensembles, orchestral music, and music for concert band. Producing scores of excellent quality and distributing them around the world through international dealers is what we aspire every day.
The Managing Director of Golden River Music, Rik Vercruysse, also pursues a career as a freelance horn player as well as a teacher at the Antwerp Conservatoire.
History
When people ask us where we found the name of our company, it asks for a little story.
Golden River Music was found in the former living room of managing director Rik Vercruysse in a small town near the river ‘Leie’. The whole area around this river was historically known for its produce of flax since the 13th century.
This flax was thrown in the river: a technique cold ‘retting’, used to facilitate separation of the fibre from the stem, so the flax could be used for the production of linen fabrics. Anyway, all this flax in the river gave it a golden shine, which is why this river was nicknamed ‘Golden River’. Although flax is produced in a more modern way for already quite a long time, the ‘Leie’ has since that time been known as ‘the Golden River’ and this is the name we decided to give to our publishing house.
Since that time, our company has moved a few times, first to Mechelen close to yet another river, and later on to the current building in Dendermonde: an old farmhouse with enough room for the family, but also with a separate building for the growing publishing company.
The days we worked from the living room are luckily long gone, but we still cherish this little history from the early days of Golden River Music.
