Contestants and Yamaha staff

Following the great success of the earlier Yamaha Sax Contest, Yamaha organized a European trumpet contest in 2004. There were four categories, classical amateur, classical student/professional, jazz/pop amateur, jazz/pop student/professional.

The candidates for the final round were selected at preliminaries in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria in September. The final was held at the Hotel Steigenberger, Berlin, from November 19 to 21, 2004.

On Friday evening, the Canadian Brass performed at an exclusive concert for the participants of the competition, the invited dealers and Yamaha staff at Friday night. On Saturday the actual competition took place. The jury members for the classical categories were: Frits Damrow (Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra), Jeroen Berwaerts (NDR Symphony Orchestra), Peter Leiner (Musikhochschule Saarbrücken), Joe Burgstaller and Stuart Laughton (Canadian Brass). The jury members for the jazz/pop categories were Till Brönner (Jazz Soloist), Hans Peter Salentin (Musikhochschule Würzburg), Andy Haderer (WDR Big Band) and Rüdiger Baldauf (TV Total Band and Studio Musician).

The juries had difficult discussions to determine the winners of each category as there was a really high standard of participants. The winner of the Classical Amateur category was Frans Bemelmans (The Netherlands) and the winner of the Classical Student/Professional category was Joris Laenen (Belgium). The Jazz/Pop Amateur category was won by Julian Wasserfuhr (Germany) and the Jazz/Pop Student/Professional category by Rik Mol (The Netherlands). The winner of each category was invited to visit the Yamaha R&D facility in Neu-Isenburg to select a Xeno trumpet and a customized mouthpiece. In addition, they each received personal coaching on Sunday from one of the eminent players on the jury.

Two special prizes were awarded, to Dmitry Geller (Germany) for the best interpretation of a contemporary work and to the Amsterdam Trumpet Quartet (Frank Braafhart, Thomas Geerts, Yumiko Naito and Jonathan de Weerd) for the performance of a piece written especially for the competition by Thomas Geerts: When You’re Sick, go to a Yamaha Trumpet Clinic.

On Saturday evening there was a Gala Concert with all the winners of the contest but also the stars of the jury. Canadian Brass started with the legendary Just a closer walk with thee. After that great starter the concert continued with classical music played by the winners, Frits Damrow and Jeroen Berwaerts. The audience was delighted by this first, classical part of the concert.

Everyone waited in suspense to hear how the concert could be continued on such a high level. But as the first winner of the jazz category entered the stage all doubts were blown away. Julian Wasserfuhr gave a stunning performance on his flugelhorn. The elite of jazz trumpeters followed on an incredibly high level, namely Andy Haderer, Hans-Peter Salentin, Ruediger Baldauf and, as one more highlight of the day, Till Brönner.

The audience was pretty overwhelmed by this top-class line-up. But Till was not the last highlight: at the end all the jazz jury members and the winners went on stage to perform together – that was the climax of the Gala Concert. The audience’s enthusiasm was something to behold!

Links:
Yamaha Musical Instruments European portal
Yamaha Trumpet Contest 2004 - De winnaars! results page (in Dutch)
Yamaha video about the contest: find the link (currently at the page bottom) for "Trumpet Contest".

Warning - the Yamaha video lasts 13 minutes and these are very large files: the low bandwidth one is about 8MB, the higher bandwidth one is 35MB. It will usually be better to save, then view them, than to try to view them directly from the web page. Currently only in Windows Media .wmv format.

 

Update: 3 May 2005 added link to Yamaha video.