The origins of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel are linked to two strong personalities: Queen Elisabeth, a violinist keen to help young talentst, and Eugčne Isa˙e, one of the greatest violinists and composers of his time. They wanted to support young talent through a highly specialised school and an international competition. The competition has been known since the outset and was to become the Queen Elisabeth Competition. The Music Chapel was inaugurated on 12 July 1939. It is known for teaching exceptional young talented musicians. On that occasion, the famous critic of the age, Emile Vuillermoz, described the Music Chapel as a sort of modern Villa Medici. After the war, from 1956 until June 2004, it developed cycles of 3 years for a maximum of 12 students. A reflection on the future of the artistic project of the College was initiated in 2001: 3 years of reflection with important personalities from the music world led to a new College on 7 October 2004 with opening, flexibility and the search for excellence through high quality individualised education as the main objectives. For the past four years, the Music Chapel has been consolidating its mission of providing excellent, individualised musical education of an international level. The educationall structure, established around the four masters in residence (Augustin Dumay, Abdel Rahman El Bacha, José Van Dam, the Artemis Quartet), has opened up to new teachers (Sybille Wilson, Daniel Ottevaere, Paola Larini) working in close cooperation with the initial education team. An analysis of the age brackets, nationalities and level of the young musicians attests to the high quality of the recruitment and a stimulating expansion of the international dimension. Finally, as in 2005 with Yossif Ivanov for the violin, 2007 stood out with a magnificent 2nd prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2007 for the Bulgarian pianist, Plamena Mangova, a student at the College since 2004. 2008 has consecrated two singers in residence, Tatiana Trenogina and Gabrielle Philiponet among the 12 finalists of the Queen Elisabeth Competition and the Dali Trio, in residence in the College since 2006, won the chamber music competition of Osaka. This educational work is closely connected to another essential and complementary activity at the Music Chapel: the organisation of concerts and events that afford students an opportunity to perform before an audience and the press and, for the most advanced among them, to play with an orchestra. Indispensable experiences to help them master their art and technique at the highest level. In addition to the concerts held at the Palais des Beaux Arts [Centre for Fine Arts] (on Sunday, at the Mont des Arts) and at Flagey ('Un midi pas comme les autres' [A noontime not like the others]) and the Opera Studio productions, in cooperation with the Monnaie, several important projects are being pursued at this time with other cultural institutions, including the MIM concerts as of February 2008, and a new production in cooperation with the Lyon Opera and the Academy of the Aix en Provence Festival. The Music Chapel also cooperates with summer festivals in Belgium and in France: Wallonia, Vexin, Montpellier, Menton, Verbier, Aix en Provence etc. It also developed a series of partnerships with foreign orchestras such the London Chamber Orchestra, the Metropolitana Orquestra de Lisboa and the National Orchestra of Lille. The Music Chapel organises about one hundred concerts and events per year. In the same line and as a follow-up to these concerts, the Music Chapel produces a series of CDs, in cooperation with the Fuga Libera label. This series offers a certain number of students an opportunity to record what will probably be their first CD under optimal conditions. The initiative has been crowned with a Diapason d'or [gold award] being conferred on Plamena Mangova for works by Shostakovitch. Asecond CD, devoted to works by Schumann by Milos Popovic, a young Belgo-Serbian pianist, released last October, has already been hailed by the press. A 3rd CD has been recorded in August 2008 at Flagey with the Dali Trio in a Ravel programme. The Music Chapel, after 4 years of renovation of its artistic training, extends its means and reinforces its structure on the juridical and financial level with the merger, on April 15th, of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and the Queen Elisabeth Music Foundation. The six initiating partners of the Foundation founded in 2004, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, La Monnaie, thePhilharmonic Society, the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the former Euphonia Foundation and the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel are to-day intimately linked to the future of the Collegeof Music. The next challenge targets the development of our facilities: the construction of new housing and additional rehearsal rooms, for which support from our private and public partners is of paramount important. Bernard de Launoit, Executive President