Pierre Van Dormael
Belgian musician (1952-2008)

Pierre Van Dormael (24 May 1952 – 3 September 2008) was a Belgian jazz guitarist and composer.
In 1988, he played in the James Baldwin Project with David Linx and Deborah Brown (vocalists), Slide Hampton (trombone), Diederik Wissels (piano), Bob Stewart (tuba), and Michel Hatzigeorgiou (bass guitar).
Van Dormael was also a member of Nasa Na Band, a jazz band known as the precursor of Aka Moon. He recorded soundtracks for films directed by his brother Jaco Van Dormael (Toto le Héros, Le Huitième Jour, Mr. Nobody).
In 2007, he received the Belgian Golden Django Award. Posthumously he received the Magritte Award for Best Original Score for his work in the movie Mr. Nobody.
He died from cancer at age 56 on 3 September 2008.
The public source identifies “Pierre Van Dormael” as belgian musician (1952-2008). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pierre, Dormael and Belgian.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q730300. VIAF identifies the subject as 66665886. The Library of Congress control number is no2006089169. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 2008, 1988 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pierre Van Dormael” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.