Profile: Jürgen Krauss TROMBONIST, SACKBUT PLAYER, BAKER
SERIES EDITOR AL ASTAIR WARREN
My earliest musical memories were certainly my grandpa (euphonium) and my father (trombone) going off to rehearse with the town band every Friday night. There was a certain aura about it – them getting shaved, putting on nice clothes, and getting the instruments down from the top of the cupboard. And of course, the whole family would attend any occasions where the band played, carnival, religious processions, and the like. When I entered primary school, we were offered recorder lessons, and together with a girl, I was ahead of the class very quickly, but I don’t remember the recorder group lasting for more than two terms or so. Anyway, it taught me to read music. When I was about 12, I picked up my father’s trombone just out of curiosity and managed to get a good noise out of it, and that started it off. I quickly got an instrument, the German style unbranded trombone my father had learned on, and after doodling around under my father’s supervision I got integrated into the youth band and later the town band. I had some lessons from the conductor, but from my current understanding there was very little in terms of direction there. Nevertheless, I enjoyed playing. Right from the beginning I joined a brass club at school, and later a Dixie band and Big Band, where I learned a lot by just playing along with a very talented euphoniumist. When I got into Oberstufe, which is somewhat equivalent to sixth form, our music teacher, who had studied at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, organised an
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Early Music group, a very lively experience of sometimes rather experimental ensembles and a bit of teenage romance. We had recorders, an oboe, a violin, a dulcian, a cello, and me on my modern trombone. At that time, I also began taking lessons with Hans Skarba, principal of Freiburg Philharmonic, and he put me into a quartet, participating in the German contest “Jugend Musiziert”, playing the Serocki Suite and Speer Sonata. I also bought lots of sheet music I couldn’t quite play … I started to think about a musical career, but frustrations with my self-taught playing, and not being able to play piano, lead to a pause in musical activities during my national service and the first half of my Physics studies. But music didn’t disappear completely from my life – I began to obsessively listen to classical music of all sorts, and a few favourites started to crystallize. Thinking about what kind of thing I would like to play or could play I chose Early Music, found a course to make Renaissance woodwind instruments and got hooked, literally, playing crumhorns and recorders. I went to the Musikwoch in Staufen, and there, after a long day of Ockeghem on recorder, in a social setting I asked a lady if I could try out her sackbut, and managed my way through Ortiz’ Recercada Primera, which I had performed years earlier at a school concert. After that I got asked a lot ‘What are you doing here playing the recorder !?’ Now, this lady was about to buy a new sackbut and lent me her old one. She was active in the Basel Posaunenchor and well connected to the Schola
