Jeroen Berwaerts

Biography

Belgian trumpeter Jeroen Berwaerts (b. 1975) is a musical force to be reckoned with whose all-embracing love of music knows no boundaries of genre. Praised for his outstanding technical capabilities and sensitive musicality, his repertoire encompasses every epoch, from baroque music to contemporary music and jazz. He has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras including the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and the Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen under conductors such as Alan Gilbert, Yakov Kreizberg, Jun Märkl and Matthias Pintscher.
His recent concert highlights include the Dutch premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s second trumpet concerto Im Nebel with the Philharmonie Zuidnederland, as well as the Belgian premiere of Francesco Filidei’s Carnevale. Jeroen Berwaerts gave the world premieres of both works in 2013 and 2015 respectively. Other highlights include performing at the opening of the chamber music hall of the “Malmö Live” concert and congress centre with the brass section of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the creation of the Signals from Heaven programme, the continuation of his collaboration with the Ensemble Resonanz and his recent performances in Japan.
Jeroen Berwaerts is only the second trumpeter worldwide - after Håkan Hardenberger, for whom the work was written - to add HK Gruber’s Busking (2007) to his repertoire. His performances of this virtuosic trumpet concerto at the First Hamburg International Music Festival and Bregenz Festival in the summer of 2014 garnered high praise.
As well as his burgeoning trumpet career, Jeroen Berwaerts has completed jazz vocal studies at the Royal Conservatory of Ghent. He has developed several programmes with piano, strings, organ and brass ensemble in which he combines trumpet and voice as well as classical, jazz and other genres in a truly unique way. Jeroen Berwaerts’ open-mindedness and resplendent playing have brought him invitations to internationally renowned music festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Niedersächsische Musiktage, Takefu International Music Festival in Japan, Ars Musica in Belgium, Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Rheingau Musik Festival.
Jeroen Berwaerts’ discography was recently complemented with the addition of a recording of Paul Hindemith’s trumpet sonata with Alexander Melnikov. The award-winning CD, released on Harmonia Mundi, features a number of the composer’s sonatas, among them the violin sonata with Isabelle Faust. He previously collaborated with Melnikov on the 2012 recording of Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under Teodor Currentzis, also on Harmonia Mundi. In the same year, NEOS released a recording of Toshio Hosokawa’s Voyage VII featuring him as soloist with the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg.
Jeroen Berwaerts studied in Karlsruhe with the celebrated trumpet-virtuoso Reinhold Friedrich. He has been awarded numerous prizes from competitions such as the Concours Maurice André and the Prague Spring International Music Competition (both 1997).
Since 2008, Jeroen Berwaerts has been a Professor of Trumpet at the Hochschule für Musik in Hannover. He is a Yamaha Artist.