Kaan Bulak & Simon Höfele
Biography Kaan Bulak & Simon Höfele
Simon Höfele
is the winner of the most important German classical music prize, OPUS KLASSIK 2020, and within a short space of time has established himself internationally as one of the most successful trumpet players of the young generation. As a soloist, he has already played with many leading orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, Bern Symphony Orchestra, Musikkollegium Winterthur, Tonkünstler Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, SWR Symphonieorchester, MDR Sinfonieorchester (MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra), NDR Radiophilharmonie, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Stuttgarter and Duisburger Philharmoniker, Staatskapelle Halle, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne among others.
He has already given guest recitals in the Wigmore Hall in London, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, in L’Auditori in Barcelona, the Müpa Budapest, the Philharmonie Luxembourg, the Bozar in Brussels, in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, in the Konzerthaus Berlin, in the Prinzregententheater and Herkulessaal in Munich, in the Konzerthaus Dortmund, at the Cheltenham Music Festival, the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, the MITO Festival, the Rheingau Musik Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the MDR Musiksommer and the Grafenegg Festival.
Simon Höfele has worked or still works with conductors such as Ryan Bancroft, Joseph Bastian, Semyon Bychkov, Sylvain Cambreling, Alpesh Chauhan, Jonathan Cohen, Dennis Russell Davies, Jan Willem de Vriend, Kevin John Edusei, Ben Gernon, Andrew Gourlay, Jonathon Heyward, Pietari Inkinen, Julia Jones, Vladimir Jurowski, Roland Kluttig, Joana Mallwitz, Andrew Manze, Enrico Onofri, Matthias Pintscher, Clemens Schuldt, Steven Sloane, Markus Stenz, Valentin Uryupin, Mario Venzago, Lorenzo Viotti, Duncan Ward, Kahchun Wong and many others.
In the 2023/24 season, Simon Höfele will perform with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the WDR Sinfonieorchester, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg and at the Staatstheater Darmstadt, among others, and will accompany the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn on a European tour with concertos by Shostakovich and Jolivet to the Köln and Essen Philharmonie and the Union Hall Maribor. This season Simon Höfele will premiere a new trumpet concerto by Lisa Streich (German premiere with the WDR Sinfonieorchester, Swiss premiere with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra) as well as the German premiere of Detev Glanert’s trumpet concerto with the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg. He will also record the new chamber music work by Christian Jost “Pieces of a Dream” for piano, trumpet and percussion with Frank Dupree and Christoph Sietzen.
As well as performing familiar trumpet repertoire ranging from Telemann, Tartini, Hummel and Mozart to Jolivet, Arutjunjan and Zimmermann, Simon Höfele is very enthusiastic about contemporary music. He has given the premières of several works written for him: “Milky Way” (09/2019, Concertgebouw) and “Orion Arm” (05/2023, Philharmonie de Paris) by Miroslav Smka, Konstantia Gourzi’s „Ypsilon, A Poem for Trumpet and Orchestra in five scenes“ at the Festival Grafenegg (09/2021, Auditorium Grafenegg), “Three pieces for trumpet” and the Concertino for trumpet and orchestra by Mark Simpson (04/2019, Saffron Hall and 05/2021 Duisburger Philharmoniker) and “Fantasy for Trumpet” by Kaan Bulak (04/2019, London). In addition, he regularly plays pieces by Toshio Hosokawa, Christian Jost and Matthias Pintscher, giving the première of the latter’s double concerto for two trumpets with Reinhold Friedrich and the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra in 2012.
Simon Höfele is an equally enthusiastic performer of chamber music in a wide variety of combinations. His partners include the pianists Elisabeth Brauß and Frank Dupree and the composer and pianist Kaan Bulak.
Simon Höfele is signed to Berlin Classics as an exclusive artist. His album “Standards” with the trumpet concertos of Haydn, Hummel, Arutjunjan and Copland, which was recorded with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Duncan Ward and released in early 2020, was acclaimed by music critics and awarded the OPUS KLASSIK 2020 prize as “concert recording of the year.” The album “New Standards”, featuring classic recital pieces by Hindemith, Honegger, Francaix and Enescu, among others, which was released in spring 2021 and his latest album “Nobody Knows” (05/2023), with contemporary works for trumpet and orchestra, were also met with the highest praise from reviewers and concert organisers.
Since July 2023, Simon Höfele has been the host of the WDR3 podcast KLASSIK CRUSH, in which he talks every fortnight with other young artists about music, their lives as musicians and other topics that concern them and the podcast’s young target group. In addition to his musical projects, he is also involved in cultural politics and had founded the association “Kunstverlust” (Art Loss), for which he had portrayed people as a photographer who are actively committed to the preservation of art and culture.
He teaches as a “Visiting Artist” at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and gives various master classes.
Kaan Bulak
writes music, performs on stage and creates sonic experiences.
Kaan Bulak was born in Aachen (DE) and spent his childhood in Istanbul (TR) where he started to play the piano at the age of 5. During high school in Stuttgart (DE) Bulak grew up at the piano as a student of Andrej Jussow. Instead of pursuing plans as a pianist, after some detours into mathematics and economy, he studied audio engineering, followed by a master in sound art at the University of Arts Berlin. Bulak studied audio techniques in Studio P4 at Funkhaus with Jean-Boris Szymczak and composition with Martin Supper. From 2018 until 2020 Bulak was a fellow of #bebeethoven for the Beethoven jubilee. During this time he researched his concept of the Augmented Piano, wrote and recorded several electro-acoustic works as an artist-in-residence at ZKM Karlsruhe.
Influenced by his two hometowns Istanbul and Berlin, Bulak found his unique way of composing beyond geographical or cultural boundaries. In a similar fashion, Bulak disregards distinctions between acoustic and electronic instruments and performs new works and arrangements of early music with his own electro-acoustic ensemble. On stage, electronic sounds breathe jointly with strings and resonate in classical halls through the custom 360° loudspeaker Lynch developed by Bulak in collaboration with Martion Audiosysteme. So far, Bulak’s music was presented on stages such as Philharmonie Berlin, Opernhaus Zürich, Verbier Festival, LSO St. Luke’s London, Şerefiye Sarnıcı Istanbul, Philharmonie Dortmund, Konzerthaus Berlin, Schloss Elmau, ZKM Karlsruhe, Sónar Istanbul, Beethovenfest Bonn, Podium Festival, XJazz Berlin & Istanbul, and aired with mention on BBC, BR Klassik, SWR2, arte, ZDF, DW, ORF. On stage and in studio Bulak has collaborated with artists from all over the spectrum such as Sarah Aristidou, Robert Lippok, Cosmin TRG, Anastasia Kobekina, Johan Dalene, Simon Höfele, Luise Enzian, Taner Akyol Trio, Julien Quentin, Adrien Boisseau, and Jay Haze.
In 2017 the audiovisual art label Feral Note was founded by Bulak to extend the process of composing and shaping music up to its release. As a composer who also mixes and masters recordings, the boundaries of musical expressions are redefined with each release and concert. Feral Note Salon, the label’s own studio in Berlin, is also where Bulak does freelance work as producer and audio engineer. Furthermore, Bulak has given lectures on how to achieve expressive sounding releases in his lectures on electro-acoustic production, mixing, and mastering at NYU Berlin Clive Davis Institute.
