The Belgian trumpeter Jeroen Berwaerts is a musical force to be reckoned with, whose all-embracing love of music knows no boundaries. Highly esteemed around the world 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, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Het Residentie Orkest, Belgian National Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, under conductors such as Alan Gilbert, Daniel Harding, Markus Stenz, Jun Märkl, and Matthias Pintscher. He is a regular guest of internationally renowned music festivals such as the BBC Proms, the Takefu International Music Festival in Japan, Ars Musica in Belgium, Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, Heidelberg Spring Festival, and the Rheingau Musik Festival.
His 2023/24 season kicks off in Australia with concerts in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. In October he performed the world premiere of a new work by Vito Žuraj Le fou triste with the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, the German premiere is to follow with Ensemble Resonanz at the Elbphilharmonie, so is the Japanese premiere with the Aichi Chamber Orchestra. In the course of the season he will also perform with Camerata Bern and Alexander Melnikov, as well as at the Liszt Academy, the Seoul Recital Hall, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, and at the Canadian Festival Domaine Forget.
Reinvigorating the standard repertoire for trumpet with ingenious, 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 role 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. Following Håkan Hardenberger he was the second trumpeter worldwide to add HK Gruber’s Busking (2007) to his repertoire. In 2019, Jeroen Berwaerts and Håkan Hardenberger premiered Tobias Broström’s double concerto for two trumpets Nigredo: The Dark Night of the Soul.
His discography’s latest addition is Signals from Heaven, recorded in 2017 with Salaputia Brass – an album which features him as trumpeter, jazz-vocalist, and ensemble director.
Jeroen Berwaerts studied with the celebrated trumpet virtuoso Reinhold Friedrich in Karlsruhe. Since 2008, he has been Professor of Trumpet at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. He is also Professor in Residence at the Royal Academy of Music in London and an official Yamaha Artist.