Jeroen Berwaerts

Belgian trumpeter Jeroen Berwaerts is a musical force to be reckoned with, whose all-embracing love of music knows no genre boundaries. Praised for his outstanding technical capabilities and sensitive musicality, his repertoire encompasses every epoch, from baroque to contemporary music and jazz.

He has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras including the NHK Symphony, Vienna Symphony, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, NDR Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmoniques of Strasbourg and Luxembourg, under conductors such as Alan Gilbert, Yakov Kreizberg, Jun Märkl and Matthias Pintscher. He is a regular guest of internationally renowned music festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Niedersächsische Musiktage, the Takefu International Music Festival in Japan, Ars Musica in Belgium, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Rheingau Musik Festival.

Placing the standard repertoire for trumpet in ingenious programmes and unusual contexts has become Jeroen Berwaerts’ calling card. One such programme places Handel’s Feuerwerksmusik and dances from Rameau’s opera Dardarus alongside chansons by Jacques Brel. The singing roles in such programmes is generally taken up by Jeroen Berwaerts himself, who – alongside his active career as a trumpeter – completed jazz vocal studies at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent

Jeroen Berwaerts’ extraordinary commitment to contemporary music is evident in the numerous world premieres he has given, including Toshio Hosokawa’s second trumpet concerto Im Nebel and Francesco Filidei’s Carnevale. After Håkan Hardenberger he was the second trumpeter worldwide to add HK Gruber’s Busking (2007) to his repertoire.

Last season he premiered Tobias Broström‘s new double concert for two trumpets Nigredo: The Dark Night of the Soul with Håkan Hardenberger and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra under John Storgårds. The work was then performed at the BBC Proms in the summer.

This season, Jeroen Berwaerts and Håkan Hardenberger perform the double concert by Bröström for the third time with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Harding. Other highlights include appearances at the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele and concerts with Ensemble Resonanz and Alexander Melnikov at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.

In 2017, Jeroen Berwaerts’ discography was complemented by the album Signals from Heaven, recorded with Salaputia Brass, with whom he is trumpeter, jazz-vocalist and ensemble director. His recording of Paul Hindemith’s trumpet sonata with Alexander Melnikov was released on Harmonia Mundi in 2015. In 2012 he recorded Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Orchestra under Teodor Currentzis with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the same year he recorded Toshio Hosokawa’s Voyage VII with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg.

Jeroen Berwaerts studied in Karlsruhe with the celebrated trumpet virtuoso Reinhold Friedrich. Since 2008, he has been a Professor of Trumpet at the Hochschule für Musik in Hannover. Jeroen Berwaerts is Professor in Residence at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He is an official Yamaha Artist.      

2019/20

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