The Department of Music presents

A Guest Lecture-Recital for MUS 2: The Music of Today

Marco Blaauw, trumpet:
"Trumpet As a Unique Voice in Art Music: From Sound Experiments to Widely Acclaimed New Repertoire"

Harris German Visiting Professor Marco Blaauw presents the double bell trumpet and demonstrates an entirely new sound pallet using a composition by Rebecca Saunders for trumpet and piano resonances.

Born in 1965, Marco Blaauw studied at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam, later continuing his studies with Pierre Thibaud and Markus Stockhausen. “I first heard New Music on television as a child. I saw how people in the audience covered their ears with their hands. That was exactly what I wanted – for people to make an effort and be surprised at what they are hearing.”

Why this instrument? At first, a practical decision: “I grew up in a village. There was a band there, and it needed a trumpet player.” Then one of his life’s goals: “I always had a picture in my head of a troubadour spreading the latest news. That’s what I want to do too – with my trumpet.” And: “The trumpet has been neglected in many regards. I see this as my appointed task – to develop the technique of the trumpet and to interest composers in the instrument.”

An important focus for Marco Blaauw has always been to further develop the trumpet, its playing technique, and to initiate new repertoire. Blaauw works in close collaboration with composers of our time. Many works have been written especially for Blaauw, including compositions by Peter Eötvös, Georg Friedrich Haas, Wolfgang Rihm, Rebecca Saunders, Martijn Padding, Isabel Mundry, Richard Ayers, Gijsbrecht Roye, and John Zorn. Blaauw worked intensely with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Flying over the orchestra in a gimbaled cage, he played the leading role in Stockhausen’s MICHAELs REISE. He presented the premier of HARMONIES for Trumpet for the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and has premiered many solo roles from the opera cycle LICHT. In 2015 he started working with La Monte Young on The Second Dream of the High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. Since then, he has produced many concerts to share La Monte Young’s groundbreaking work for audiences in Europe.

Marco Blaauw’s work is widely documented through radio, television and CD recordings. His sixth solo CD, Angels, was awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2014. As a composer, Blaauw was awarded the 2016 Karl Sczuka Prize for his first radio play, deathangel. Blaauw has been intensely active as a teacher at international master classes in Darmstadt and Lucerne and as a faculty member for the Masters aus LICHT program at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague.