At the age of 15 he sat in with R&B-giants such as Bob Hall, Dave Peabody and the Deluxe Blues Band at the Belgian Folk & Blues festival, playing ragtime, blues, boogie-woogie and gospel piano. At the European Youth Music Festival (1984) the Dutch Television (NOS) recorded Dirk's performance of the jazz-musical "On the town" scored by Leonard Bernstein.
In 1989 Dirk graduated as a Master in Germanic Philology at the Catholic University of Louvain. For three years he worked as a scientific researcher in the field of Computational Linguistics at the Linguistics Department of the Louvain Faculty of Arts. He gave lectures on the development of "Controlled Language" at the Heriot- Watt University in Edinburgh (Scotland) and at the Institute of Science and Technology of the Manchester University (UK). The syntactic and the semantic aspects of linguistics and improvised music have always been two major points of interest in the development of his compositional craftmanship and improvising skills.
Moreover, over the years Dirk crossed the path of great musicians such as Enrico Pieranunzi, Bob Berg, Trilok Gurtu, John Abercrombie, Joey deFrancesco, Jack de Johnette, Martial Solal, Daniel Goyonne, Reggie Washington, Gene Lake, David Gilmore, and David Kikoski, all of whom - through their inspiring teachings, performances and talks - gave spiritual direction to Dirk's dynamic approach to jazz and improvised music.
Since 1985 he has been on stage and/or at studio sessions across Europe playing with numerous fine jazz musicians such as Koen, Johan and Peter Vandendriessche, Fabien Degryse, Bruno Meeus, Michel Hatzigeorgiou, Tony Gyselinck, Piet Verbist, Yves Baibay, Hugo Bogaerts, Pietro Lacirignola, Jeroen Van Herzeele, Roman Korolik, Mimi Verderame, Walter Baeken, Jean Borlée, Jan Mues, Lieven Venken, Eric Surmenian, Werner Lauscher, Frederik Leroux, Nico Schepers, Lydia Van Dam, Thierry Gutmann, Frank Michiels, Dré Pallemaerts, Herman Pardon, Jan Servaes, Ron Van Stratum, Bart de Nolf, Christophe DeVisscher, Jean-Louis Rassinfosse, Henk de Laat, Eric Surmenian, Peter Verhaegen, Frank Deruytter, Carlo Nardozza, Dieter Limbourg, Robin Verheyen, and many more…
He has composed and arranged over 250 tunes, many of which have found their way not only to the performing stage but also to the realm of radio and television around Western Europe. Dirk also received three SABAM for Culture jazz composition prizes, in 2001, 2002 and 2013. What's more, he composed the music to a unique video installation by Argentinian visual artist Marta Graciela Bressi. This art project called Minds of Glass was shown at internationally renowned film and art festivals in Buenos Aires, Los Angeles and New York in 2009. In 2015 he composed "12: the Prophet – The Zodiac – the SIgnatures", a cycle of 12 numerological "Berlin, School of Electronic Music"-style sonic miniatures celebrating the beauty of the Zodiac.
Since 1994 Dirk has been a professor of music, teaching jazzpiano, improvisation theory, jazz/fusion ensemble, and jazz methodology at the Jazz Department of the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music. Nowadays you can find him at jazz clubs, theaters and on festival stages around Europe sitting in with his acoustic project De Laat & Schreurs, the New Enrique Tarde Group, Ben Vanderweyden Quartet and the revival of the legendary Belgian jazz-fusion band Milkshake Banana 2.0.
