Getzen Announces First Annual Ian Bousfield International Tenor Trombone Solo Competition

Christan Griego

January 4th, 2021

Ian Bousfield and his Getzen 4147IB

Getzen has decided to collaborate with Ian Bousfield to bring you the first annual Ian Bousfield International Tenor Trombone Solo Competition. Ian Bousfield is a supreme musical talent. He’s equally at home performing in the symphony or as a soloist. His teaching is exceptional, as well. Working with Ian these past 9+ years has been a treat for everyone in Elkhorn, so we’re thrilled to be collaborating with him to bring you this event.

Who is eligible?

The Bousfield Competition is for trombonists under the age of 25 who are not engaged by a professional full-time orchestra at the time of the competition. Freelance musicians under the age of 25 are welcome to enter.

Aimed at emulating the model of the top-level orchestral player who is also heavily involved in solo playing, candidates will be asked to show their skill in both orchestral and solo environments.

What is the repertoire?

Concertino (first movement only) by Ferdinand David
Tuba Mirum from Mozart’s Requiem
Solo of your choice from any era or style. Feel free to show what it is that you really do well! No time limit but choose something that will make your biggest impact!

Who are the judges?

We have assembled a truly world-class set of judges to listen to you and assess where you are right now. This is your chance to impress your heroes.

Nir Erez

Photo © Maria Rosenblatt

Principal trombone player of the Israel Philharmonic since 2012 and a member of the orchestra since 2008, Nir Erez is also the trombone professor in both Tel Aviv’s Bachmann-Mehta Music Academy and the Jerusalem Academy of music member of the Israel Philharmonic Brass Quartet.

Nir began his trombone studies in 1998 at the age of ten under the instruction of Nachman Yariv and Vladimir Flaxman in his hometown of Lod. Nir has studied over the years with the finest musicians and trombone players in the world, including Daniele Morandini (La Scala), Ian Bousfield (Former Wiener Philharmonic), Joseph Alessi (New York), Micha Davis (Israel), Michel Becquet (France), Ralph Sauer (Los Angeles), Jay Friedman (Chicago), Andrea Bandini (Geneva) and more. He is the winner of the Audience Choice Award in the Aviv Competition for brass (2010) and has also been awarded excellence scholarships by the American-Israel Culture Fund between the years 2002-2012. A frequent participant in international brass workshops, chamber music festivals, and ensembles, Nir has been invited to play as guest principal player in Teatro La Scala in Milan, and with Maestro Claudio Abbado and his Orchestra Mozart in Luzern Festival, with which he recorded for the Deutsche Gramophone label. His activities as a teacher include masterclasses abroad, in places such as Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Athens, and more. Nir’s Approach towards playing and teaching is very much inspired by his recent fascination for Yoga, and the attempt to combine the two worlds of body and spirit.

Visit Nir’s website

Marshall Gilkes

Simply considering the range of music that Marshall Gilkes has played over the course of his career, it would be easy to assume that the trombonist/composer is a musical chameleon, able to alter his sound to fit into whatever situation he finds himself. After all, it seems unlikely that an individual sound would be able to express itself in such diverse contexts as the lush impressionism of the Maria Schneider Orchestra; the exotic chamber jazz of Colombian harpist Edmar Castañeda’s trio; or the fiery combustion of New York’s thriving Latin music scene.

But listen to the four albums that Gilkes has released under his own name – in particular his latest, a stunning set of compositions for the WDR Big Band named for its home base, Köln – and it immediately becomes clear how the versatile trombonist can integrate myriad influences into a singular and distinctive voice. Gilkes combines the spontaneous invention of jazz with the elegant architecture of classical composition; straightahead swing with adventurous modernism; virtuosic technique with passionate emotion. It’s a rare combination that has made Gilkes an in-demand performer, composer, sideman, and clinician since his arrival in New York City in the late 1990s.

They’ve also garnered him accolades from critics, audiences, and peers alike. In 2003 Gilkes was a finalist in the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and won the up and coming trombonist in Downbeat magazine’s 2017 Critics Poll. Bill Milkowski of JazzTimes has called Gilkes “compelling, harmonically intriguing and ferociously swinging,” while bandleader Maria Schneider refers to him as “one of those musicians who continually just drops my jaw and leaves me shaking my head in disbelief.”While his musical career has taken him to stages around the world, including four years in Cologne (Köln), Germany, as a member of the WDR Big Band, Gilkes became familiar with travel long before a trombone ever touched his lips. Gilkes’ father was a trombonist and euphonium player and later conductor in the Air Force, which led the family from Washington D.C. – Gilkes was born on Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland – to New Hampshire, New Jersey, Alabama, Illinois, and Colorado. It was his father’s influence that led Gilkes to pick up the trombone – apparently much earlier than he should have. Members of his father’s Air Force band recall their conductor, who by that time had decisively traded his trombone for the baton, suddenly keeping his instrument in his office. It seems his young son insisted on trying it out for himself and was doing more harm than good.

That early experience laid the groundwork for Gilkes to study trombone in school once the music program started handing out instruments, however. While his early training was in classical music, Gilkes heard jazz from an early age through the Falconaires, then one of the Air Force’s premier jazz ensembles, and on his own initiative began collecting albums by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong. Gilkes ultimately entered the jazz program at the Juilliard School, though he continued his classical education in parallel, including studies with Joseph Alessi, the longtime Principal Trombonist of the New York Philharmonic.

From the time he settled in New York in 1998, Gilkes spent the next twelve years working steadily as a sideman while honing his own highly individual voice. In the ensuing years, he’s played and recorded with a staggering variety of artists and ensembles, including the David Berger Jazz Orchestra, Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project, Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, the Christian McBride Big Band, Billy Cobham, Richard Bona, and Barbra Streisand.

Gilkes released his debut as a leader, Edenderry, in 2004 with a quartet featuring pianist Jon Cowherd, bassist Matt Clohesy, and drummer Johnathan Blake. He followed that with the quintet recordings Lost Words in 2008 and Sound Stories in 2012. His latest release, Köln, teams Gilkes with the German WDR Big Band, with whom he was a member from 2010-2013.

During his four years in Cologne, Gilkes worked with renowned soloists, composers, and arrangers including Michael Abene, Vince Mendoza, John Scofield, Chris Potter, Kenny Wheeler, Randy Brecker, Patti Austin, Mike Stern, Ron Carter, and Maceo Parker. The influence of those experiences can be heard on Köln, which showcases vivid ensemble writing and arranging which marks the furthest evolution to date of Gilkes’ deft combination of his jazz and classical influences.

Those complex and memorable compositions have begun to attract notice from jazz festivals and educational institutions across the country and around the world, leading to invitations for Gilkes as a composer, bandleader and clinician. While he returned to New York in early 2014, life after his interlude in Germany has begun to once again resemble his childhood as an on-the-move military brat. He continues to work regularly with the Maria Schneider Orchestra and the Edmar Castañeda Trio while teaching and offering master classes at institutions including The Banff Center, Berklee College of Music, the New School for Jazz, and Contemporary Music, and the Brubeck Institute.

Visit Marshall’s website

James Markey

James Markey joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as Bass Trombone in Fall 2012 following a 15-year tenure in the New York Philharmonic as Associate Principal (1997-2007) and Bass Trombone (2007-2012), and a two-year tenure as Principal Trombone of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1995-1997).

Mr. Markey has been a featured soloist with numerous ensembles including the Boston Pops, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the United States Army Band (Pershing’s Own), the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, Hora Decima Brass Ensemble, and the New York Staff Band of the Salvation Army.

An avid educator, he has been a featured artist at multiple iterations of the International Trombone Festival, the American (formerly Eastern) Trombone Workshop, and music educators’ conferences around the country, and is a frequent featured artist for trombone camps around the world. He currently serves as bass trombone faculty and Chair of Brass and Percussion at the New England Conservatory in Boston and serves as the Trombone Choir Director of the New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School. Additionally, he has served on the faculty of the Juilliard School, Mannes College: the New School for Music, New York University, Purchase College (SUNY), Longy School of Music, Montclair State University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division.

Mr. Markey has released four solo recordings: Offroad, on tenor trombone, released in 2003; On Base, a solo bass trombone recording, released in 2009; a two-disc album of orchestral and opera excerpts for bass trombone with Denson Paul Pollard, and a second solo bass trombone recording titled Psychedelia, in 2015. He is also a featured soloist on A Beautiful Noise, a compilation of solos for tenor and bass trombone produced by the Columbus State University Trombone Choir, and on the Hora Decima Brass Ensemble’s recording of Janko Nilovi?’s Concerto for Two Trombones. Mr. Markey studied with Joseph Alessi at the Juilliard School, where he received his Bachelor and Master of Music Degrees in 2005 and 2006.

Stefan Schulz

Photo © Jarek Raczek

Stefan Schulz first played the horn and later switched to the trombone. He studied in Berlin and Chicago. Before joining the Berliner Philharmoniker, he was bass trombonist in the Staatskapelle Berlin from 1993 to 2002. From 1996 to 2002 he also played in the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.

When he started his career, his educational commitment also began: initially as a mentor at the orchestra academy of the Staatskapelle Berlin and as a lecturer at the University of Music and Theater in Hanover. From 2000 to 2004 he taught as a visiting professor at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. Since the summer semester of 2004, Stefan Schulz has been a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts.

Stefan Schulz played as a soloist with well-known orchestras around the world. The committed chamber musician is a permanent member of the brass ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic and founded the World Trombone Quartet together with trombone soloists Joseph Alessi, Michel Bequet, and Jorgen van Rijen. The CD “just for fun” was also released with this ensemble on the ARCANTUS label. He has a special artistic friendship with the composer and saxophonist Daniel Schnyder, some of whose works he has premiered and premiered and recorded on CD. His solo CDs have been released on the Swedish label BIS; the CD Haendel in Harlem with Mark Feldman and Daniel Schnyder released the jazz label ENJA-Records. Stefan Schulz plays exclusively on instruments made by Antoine Courtois.

In the 2017/2018 season, Stefan Schulz is artist-in-residence with the Augsburg Philharmonic.

Visit Stefan’s website

Helen Vollam

Helen Vollam is Principal Trombone of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and is also a member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Bones Apart Trombone Quartet. She was appointed Principal Trombone of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2004 and is the first woman to be appointed principal trombone of a London orchestra. Her schedule with the BBCSO includes performing in the BBC Proms each year and the legendary ‘Last Night of the Proms’, broadcast worldwide.

Helen studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Eric Crees and Simon Wills. Prior to this, she studied with Denis Wick. She was Principal Trombone of the EUYO and won the Bronze Medal in the 1995 Shell/LSO competition. In 2003 she won the Woodwind & Brass Award and Philip Jones Memorial Prize in the Royal Over-Seas League Music Competition and was the first-ever trombone player to reach the competition’s final.

She has performed with most of the UK’s orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and further afield with Spira Mirabilis and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie. She has worked with conductors and artists such as Haitink, Giulini, Boulez, Harnoncourt, Abbado, Nézet-Séguin, Oramo, Bychkov, Ozawa, Rattle, Previn, John Adams, John Williams, Bryn Terfel, Joyce DiDonato, and Monty Python.

In demand as a guest teacher, Helen has given classes throughout the UK including at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Royal Academy of Music, and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. With Bones Apart she has given masterclasses at Juilliard, Rutgers State University, International Trombone Festivals, Lieksa Brass Week, and International Belgian Brass Festival.
She was on the Artist Faculty for the 2017 Dublin Brass Week and has adjudicated for BBC Young Musician, Royal Over-Seas League, BBC Radio 2 Young Brass Award, British Trombone Society, International Trombone Association, and Swisstbone competitions.

Helen has played on many film soundtracks, including Star Wars: The Attack of the Clones, three Harry Potter films, Inception, Iron Man 2, Brave, and No Time to Die. Many of her trombone ensemble arrangements are published through Bones Apart Publishing. In 2017 she was the recipient of the British Trombone Society’s Sheila Tracy Award for ‘significant contribution to her field’.

In 2019 Helen gave the world premiere of Gavin Higgins’ new trombone concerto ‘Book of Miracles’, written especially for her, with the BBCSO at the Barbican. In 2020 she performed and recorded Mabuika! by Shirley Thompson which was written for her as part of the BBC Radio 3 Composer Postcards series.

Visit Helen’s website

Jeremy Wilson

Trombonist Jeremy Wilson is acclaimed for the versatility and lyricism of his playing as well as his insight and commitment as a teacher. Currently Associate Professor of Trombone at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, Wilson is something of a legend in trombone circles. On his first-ever audition attempt at the age of 25, he won a prestigious position with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and its sister organization, the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera. Just out of college, he honed his performance skills in Vienna as a member of one of the most renowned musical organizations in the world. At the time, he was the orchestras’ only American full-time member, splitting his time between second trombone, first trombone, euphonium, and bass trumpet.

During his tenure in Vienna (2007-2012), Wilson performed hundreds of orchestral concerts at home and in 28 countries around the globe under the batons of the world’s leading conductors, including Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Gustavo Dudamel, Valery Gergiev, Mariss Jansons, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, and Franz Welser-Möst. At the Vienna State Opera, he played over 550 performances of 85 different operas and ballets, including five complete Wagner “Ring” cycles. He had the honor of performing with some of the greatest opera singers of our time, including Renée Fleming, Thomas Hampson, Jonas Kaufmann, and Anna Netrebko, and his artistry is documented on numerous recordings.

A native of Tennessee, Wilson returned to his home state in 2012 to fulfill his long-time passion for teaching and devote more time to his young family. He accepted a full-time teaching position at Vanderbilt University but continued a busy performance schedule as well. During the 2013-14 arts season, he served as guest principal trombonist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and subbed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He also has performed on several occasions with the Saito Kinen Orchestra at the special invitation of Maestro Seiji Ozawa.

In addition to his versatility as an orchestral player, Wilson is highly sought as a soloist and chamber musician. The winner of numerous solo competitions, he has been featured in concerto performances and solo recitals in venues across the country. As a chamber artist, he has performed with a range of brass ensembles, including Tri-Star Brass, Maniacal 4, and the award-winning trombone quartet from the University of North Texas, and he is a regular member of the Blair Brass Quintet, composed of Vanderbilt faculty. With his keen affinity for jazz, Wilson also was a member of the University of North Texas’s famed One O’Clock Lab Band, the University of Tennessee’s award-winning ensemble Tennessee Trombonery, and the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra. He recently released his debut album titled Perspectives.

Highly respected as a dedicated teacher and clinician, Wilson has given masterclasses and lectures around the United States. He has been a featured guest artist at the International Trombone Festival, the American Trombone Workshop, and the Trombones de Costa Rica Festival. His students have been finalists for several domestic and international competitions and have participated in many prestigious summer festivals. Wilson currently serves on the Vanderbilt Faculty Senate, is the faculty advisor for the Pi Delta chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, and is Music Director and Faculty Advisor of the Commodore Orchestra, a Vanderbilt campus orchestra comprised mainly of non-music majors. He recently received the Blair School’s Faculty Excellence Award.

Wilson started studying music in the sixth grade, becoming a serious student of the trombone in high school. In college, he double-majored in music education and performance at the University of Tennessee, where he was a Presser Scholar, before getting a Master of Music at the University of North Texas, graduating in 2011. His teachers have included Don Hough, Vern Kagarice, Jan Kagarice, Tony Baker, and Tom Lundberg.

Wilson currently resides in Franklin, Tennessee, with his wife Kristi and their three children.

Visit Jeremy’s website

Matthew Gee

Matthew is Principal Trombone with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Aurora Orchestra, and the brass septet Septura. He is also on the teaching faculty at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

He is about to release his fourth solo album, Songs of Travel exploring English song cycles by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Stanford. Like his last recording (Schubert’s Winter Journey) this will be released on the Naxos label. Matthew has had a number of works written for him, most notably Circus Games and Sonata by Rob Keeley, and Fischietto è morto by Gary Carpenter and gave the U.K. Première of Kurt Schwertsik’s Trombone Concerto at St. Johns’, Smith Square. He has performed and taken masterclasses in many international festivals, including those in Melbourne, Wellington, New York, Sarajevo, Lieksa (Finland), Isla Verde (Argentina), and Beijing.

Matthew has performed with orchestras and ensembles all over the world, including the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Klangforum Wein, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and has recorded and appeared in many films and television scores.

He is President of the British Trombone Society and takes an active part in promoting the trombone and developing its repertoire. Matthew is a Getzen artist.

Visit Matthew’s website

What else do I need to know?

Participants will need to submit a $20 fee.
Participants will need to submit videos of their unedited performances.
Materials and fee must be received by March 15, 2021 @ 12 pm US CDT.
Winners will be notified on April 15, 2021.

What are the prizes?

1st Prize: Getzen 4147IB Custom Reserve Trombone
2nd Prize: $500 gift certificate from Edwards Instruments
3rd Prize: Your choice of an Ian Bousfield Mouthpiece

In addition, the most deserving candidates will receive three online lessons with Ian. He will also be offering one free online lesson to the best candidate under 18 years of age.

Prizes will be delivered to your closest distributor, free of charge. Any and all shipping from the distributor to the winner will be his or her responsibility.

Shipping locations

How do I enter?

Go here! And good luck!