Norwegian tuba player and composer Øystein Baadsvik (born 1966). Sttarted playing the tuba at the age of fifteen. He soon decided to explore the tuba’s possibilities as a solo instrument and, at the age of eighteen, he won the first prize in a Norwegian national competition for soloists. Within the space of two years he had made programmes for Norwegian Radio and had been a soloist with most of Norway’s professional symphony orchestras. Øystein Baadsvik studied under Michael Lind, Roger Bobo, John Fletcher, Arnold Jacobs and Harvey Phillips. His international career began with two prizes at the prestigious Concours International d’Exécution Musicale (CIEM) in Geneva in 1991. Today he is in great demand as a soloist and lecturer all over the world, and he is unique in being a full-time tuba soloist. Baadsvik has played with orchestras such as the Oslo Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. He works constantly to expand the musical aspects of the tuba. Øystein Baadsvik has premièred some forty solo works by composers from the USA, Russia, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. He also composes music himself, and conducts many of his own orchestral concerts. As his desire to communicate with his audience has always been his guiding principle, he has also developed new tuba-playing techniques that have been used in a number of more recent works for the instrument. Previous discs on BIS are the highly acclaimed ‘Tuba Carnival’ [BIS-CD-1285] and the recently released ‘Danzas’ [BIS-CD-1585]. Visit the official website of
Øystein Baadsvik
