Øystein Baadsvik

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Øystein Baadsvik (1966- ) is the only tuba virtuoso to have carved out a career exclusively as a soloist, rather than becoming a member of an orchestra or accepting a teaching post. His multi-faceted musical career as a soloist, chamber musician and recording artist has taken him all over the world. The unique virtuosity and musicality Mr. Baadsvik’s brings to the tuba has established him as the exemplar of the instrument.

[edit] Biography

He began playing the tuba at the age of fifteen and won first prize at eighteen in a Norwegian national competition for soloists. Within two years he had created programs for Norwegian Radio and had been a soloist with most of Norway’s professional symphony orchestras.

He studied under the world-renowned tuba player Harvey Phillips, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Music, Indiana University and with the legendary Arnold Jacobs, who had a forty-year career and position of Principal Tuba with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Øystein Baadsvik’s international career began in 1991 when he was awarded two prizes at the prestigious Concours International d’Exécution Musicale in Geneva. He had developed an amazing virtuoso technique at quite a young age and was very well equipped musically to step out on the world stage.

His international engagements include performances with Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Musica Vitae, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, the Taipei National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, Orchestra Victoria of Melbourne, Warsaw Philharmonic, Wratislavia Chamber Orchestra, Gdansk Philharmonic, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Philharmonic and in Tokyo, a solo recital at the Kawaguchi Lilia Concert Hall.

Øystein Baadsvik is well known for his master classes and tuba clinics which are frequently held in numerous leading universities throughout the United States including The Juilliard School, Indiana University, Cleveland Institute of Music, Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and the University of Wisconsin. He works constantly to expand the musical aspects of the tuba, performing solo repertoire for tuba and orchestra, and collaborating with jazz and rock musicians. In all these genres, his guiding principle has been to communicate directly with his audience. He has developed new tuba-playing techniques that have been used in a number of more recent works for the instrument. In recognition, the Norwegian state in 1999 awarded Mr. Baadsvik a two-year scholarship to continue this work.

In praise of his performance in Warsaw, the critic Ruch Muzyczny, said, “After listening to the concert with Baadsvik as soloist in the Tuba Concerto of Ralph Vaughn Williams with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Christopher Seaman, the reviewer wishes that pianists and violinists should study the tuba for at least one year during his education to learn where to find models for phrasing and rubato tempo.”

Øystein Baadsvik has premiered some forty solo works by composers from the USA, Russia, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. He has added to the tuba literature with his own compositions and conducts many of his own orchestral concerts.

He is an active recording artist whose CDs receive unstinting praise. The recent “Tuba Carnival” was released in 40 countries on the BIS label and became an instant hit. It is offered through the Musical Heritage Society, a premiere source of classical music recordings and is rapidly becoming a popular classic with public radio broadcasts on BBC, NPR, ABC radio in Australia, SR in Sweden and NRK in Norway as well as other radio stations in New Zeeland, Poland and Germany. It was recommended by the music magazine ClassicToday as one of the six best recordings in the world for solo instrument and orchestra released in 2003. Mr. Baadsvik has achieved a major break-through in Japan with CD sales. For the last two years he ranks second in sales of recordings for all wind instruments.

In his latest release, “Danzas” for tuba and piano, a collaboration with Niklas Sivelöv, Mr. Baadsvik has chosen works with the common theme of the dance and include compositions by Piazzolla, Hindemith, Gordon Jacob and Leonard Bernstein .

Other upcoming CD releases include the tuba concerti of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Lundquist, John Williams and Alexander Arutiunian with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and the tuba concerti of Kalevi Aho, Fredrik Högberg and Jan Sandström with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra.