Workshop with Marco Blaauw
Saturday, July 20

11 am – 1 pm
Frederick Loewe Theatre
35 West 4th Street, NYC
FREE and open to the public

Presented by Analog Arts and NYU with cooperation from the Festival of New Trumpet Music.

Marco Blaauw’s only educational appearance in NYC during his soloist appearance with musikFabrik at the Lincoln Center Festival. Marco will talk about his approach to the trumpet, and demonstrate his double-bell trumpet. The event is free and open to the public!

Marco Blaauw has an international career as a soloist and is a member of the ensemble musikFabrik in Cologne. Some of the orchestras and new music ensembles with which he has performed as soloist are: the Dutch Radio Symphony Orchestra, the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, WDR Radio Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Klangforum Wien, London Sinfonietta, Schoenberg Ensemble and musikFabrik. Many works have been written especially for Blaauw or have been inspired by his playing, including compositions by Peter Eötvös, Rebecca Saunders, Richard Ayres and Isabel Mundry.

He is also active as a teacher with notable residencies since 2003 at the Stockhausen Courses Kuerten and in 2004 and 2006 at the International Summer Courses for new music in Darmstadt. Since August 2008 Marco Blaauw is guest docent at the Music College of Lucerne, Switserland.

MICHAEL’S JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD Michael’s Journey Around the World
Lincoln Center Festival

Avery Fisher Hall
July 18-20, 8 PM

“Michael’s Journey Around the World” is Act II from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s first opera, Thursday from Light. In the act, Michael is portrayed onstage by a trumpeter, and there is virtually no spoken dialogue. Michael journeys around the world, making seven stops at different locations. Michael endures a musical crucifixion, before he ascends into Heaven with Eve.

In the original production, Michael’s journey was depicted by a giant rotating globe. Each station had a door that would reveal Michael (portrayed by Markus Stockhausen). In the revival by musikFabrik, Michael is placed in a crane, which is manipulated by a team of dancers. The crane allows for almost unlimited motion. The production debuted in 2008, with a short tour of major European cities. Marco Blaauw stepped into the role of Michael, as he has done for most productions from the Light cycle since 2003.

For more on the production, visit the Lincoln Center Festival’s website.

THE DOUBLE BELL TRUMPET The concept of a trumpet with multiple bells has been around for a long time. Bobby Shew was one of its more notable modern proponents. Marco has been busy developing repertoire for the instrument and refining its technique, turning into more than just a mere curiosity.

On his website, Marco writes in detail about his pioneering work with the double bell trumpet:
“In my career as a soloist and ensemble player mainly performing contemporary music, I felt a strong need to enhance my trumpet. Somehow the trumpet didn’t seem complete: new repertoire often uses quarter-tones and fast mute changes.
Gradually I developed the idea of a trumpet that could do both easily: a quarter-tone, double bell trumpet.

In 1999, after trying several trumpet makers, I visited Dieter Gärtner in Düren, Germany.

He was very open to my ideas. Over the years I had collected quite a few trumpet parts, like bells, lead pipes and tuning slides. It was obvious to use these for the realization of the idea.

Dieter started with adding a 4th valve; the quarter-tone valve. He soldered a rotary valve onto the tuning slide. That seemed easy!

The next step was to add a fifth valve for attaching a second bell.”
Read the rest of this wonderful essay at Marco’s website.

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