Jeffrey Bossin, Berlin
Carillonneur
Jeffrey 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, founding member
of the Association of the Campanological Arts in Russia, vice-president
of
the international carillon organization Eurocarillon,
and a member of
the Initiative Neue Musik Berlin
e.V.
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 1992 and 1999 he served on the juries
of the first two competitions for Russian bellringers in Yaroslavl,
Russia.
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, and 1990 and
the Eurocarillon festival in 1998. 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.
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.