Jeffrey Bossin, Berlin Carillonneur

JeffreyBossin.jpgJeffrey Bossin was born in 1950 in Santa Monica, California and is contracted by the KBB (Cultural Events of the German Federal Government in Berlin) as a free-lance carillonneur to play the carillon in Berlin-Tiergarten. He is also a musicologist and the vice-president of the international carillon organization Eurocarillon.

Bossin learned to play the carillon in 1968-1971 at the University of California, Riverside and attended a master class for carillon at the church music school in Løgumkloster, Denmark in 1985. He performs at international carillon festivals in Europe and the USA, and his concerts have been broadcast on TV and radio in many countries. He specializes in performing New Music and has premiered works by many professional composers such as Aldo Clementi, Ricardo Mandolini, Per Nørgård, Charlemagne Palestine, and Anthony Skilbeck for solo carillon, carillon and saxophone, carillon and electronics, and carillon, orchestra, and chorus.

Bossin also worked as a carillonneur in the orchestra of the theatre piece The Forest by Robert Wilson and David Byrne, in the SAT 1 TV film Das Tor des Feuers with Götz George and the TV documentary Portrait af Per Nørgård, about the life and work of the Danish composer. In 1994 Bossin won a prize for the best carillon arrangements awarded by the city of Chambéry as part of the Ninth World Carillon Congress.

In 1984 Bossin proposed the building of a carillon to commemorate Berlin's 750th anniversary, works as the project consultant for the Berlin administration and Daimler-Benz from 1986 till 1987, and played the dedication concert on the new instrument. Since 1988 he has played regular concerts as Berlin carillonneur and many special concerts such as those for the World Bank Conference in 1988, the Berlin Marathon in 1988 and 1989, the official ceremony in front of the Reichstag to reunify Germany in 1990, for Christo's Wrapped Reichstag in 1995, and for the Sonambiente Festival to mark the 300th anniversary of the Akademie der Künste Berlin in 1996.

Bossin has also organized many concerts and festivals with carillonneurs from Europe and the USA, such as the PfingstCarillon in 1988, 1989, 1990 and 2012, the Eurocarillon festival in 1998 and the carillon festival marking the 30th anniversary of the installation of the Carillon in Berlin-Tiergarten in 2017. The Berliner Festspiele engaged him to organize and play concerts on the French travelling carillon as part of the events staged at the Kulturforum to mark the beginning of the new millennium at the end of December 1999. In 2001 the German Chancellor asked him to play the carillon for his personal ceremony to honour the victims of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. In 2008 he played concerts for the Water Music Festival at the House of World Cultures and in 2020 Bossin was commissioned to open the German governments official ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War by striking the bells of the Carillon in Berlin-Tiergarten twelve times.

Bossin received his B.A. in Music in 1972 from the University of California at Riverside and his M.A. in Musicology in 1984 from the Technical University of Berlin, where he studied with Prof. Carl Dahlhaus. He has published many articles about the carillon and gives regular lectures on the topic. His book The Carillons of Berlin and Potsdam - Five Centuries of the Carillon in the Old World and the New was the first comprehensive history of the instrument since the 1920s.