About the Global Trumpets Festival

Every day, a human being moves twelve cubic meters of air. Through respiration. In some 20,000 breaths. How would it be to send this amount of air around the world? And not silently, as we know it from respiration, but as a sound? Could this sound be translated into the many different languages of the world, and could it be used to spread a musical and social message?

The idea of a trumpet sound that spans the globe underlies the “Global Breath” project, initiated by Dutch trumpeter Marco Blaauw: the starting point is an international research project that offers insights into the traditions, customs, and sounds of the trumpet in different countries and cultures. 

Trumpet pioneers from all over the world were interviewed about their perception of sound, their social, geographical, and political environment, as well as about their special playing techniques and musical genres John Wallace, Mazen Kerbaj, Rajesh Mehta, Bruce Dickey, Wadada Leo Smith, Peter Evans, Taylor Ho Bynum, Djallu Guruwiwi und Laura Vukobratovič. The interviews with musicians from Germany, Australia, England, Italy, Scotland, Serbia, and the United States brought together a wealth of valuable knowledge and experience. These experiences will be shared and expanded upon at an international, decentralized festival event.

It is here that the various players will come together and present the trumpet and other lip-reed instruments in all their varieties and timbres. Together with trumpet professor Laura Vukobratović, Marco Blaauw has assembled a varied and sometimes extraordinarily unusual program of workshops, lectures, talks, and concerts. 

The aim is to exchange music, ideas, and artistic approaches, creating new networks and the mutual transfer of knowledge; between musicians themselves as well as between spectators, workshop participants, and students. 

A particular focus will be placed on the continuing and undeniable shortage of women in the professional brass landscape and – in connection with this – on the discussion of concrete measures to improve the situation. The proportion in German orchestras of just four percent female trumpet players confirms the long-overdue need for action.

The festival offers a wide range of opportunities for fans, from early music through jazz to new music and cross-genre styles. This exchange is made possible both in meetings on-site and in a digital platform – in the spirit of ecological sustainability and resource conservation. In this way, ideas developed and spun together can combine to form a colorful trumpet sound that continuously moves around the earth and rings into the future.