Henri Bok (born 9 March 1950,

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

) is a Dutch

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays notes an octave bel ...

ist known for his unique compositions.

Career

One of the 'Big Three' in bass clarinet history, Henri Bok is a very active worldwide ambassador of his beloved instrument, one to which he has devoted his life as a performer, teacher, improviser and composer. His unique rich and warm sound can be heard on numerous recordings. Bok is noted for his new sound combinations leading to unusual instrumental groups: Duo Contemporain (with

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist,' ...

), Duo Novair (with

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

), Bass Instincts (with

bass oboe The bass oboe or baritone oboe is a double reed instrument in the woodwind family. It is essentially twice the size of a regular (soprano) oboe so it sounds an octave lower; it has a deep, full tone somewhat akin to that of its higher-pitched cou ...

), Duo Clarones (

duo with

Luis Afonso Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

'Montanha'), Duo HeRo (with

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

pianist Rob van Bavel) and Duo Hevans (with Eleri Ann Evans,

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

s). Bok has also collaborated with fellow musicians Gustavo Beytelmann, José Luis Estellés, Mike Garson,

Josef Horák Josef Horák (24 March 1931 – 23 November 2005) was a Czech bass clarinetist. It was not until the 1950s that classical performers began to adopt the bass clarinet as their primary instrument. Horák is credited as having performed the first e ...

, Bennie Maupin, Justo Sanz,

Louis Sclavis Louis Sclavis (born 2 February 1953) is a French jazz musician. He performs on clarinet, bass clarinet, and soprano saxophone in a variety of contexts, including avant-garde jazz, free jazz, free improvisation and contemporary classical. Life ...

, Willem Tanke, Henri Tournier, Dawn Upshaw, Eric Vloeimans, and many others from all styles and genres. These collaborations have resulted in many new pieces dedicated to him. Bok has been professor of bass clarinet at Codarts/Rotterdam Superior Conservatoire (The

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

). He was professor of bass clarinet at Musikene until 2020 (San Sebastian, Spain), as well as guest professor at the Robert Schumann Hochschule für Musik (Düsseldorf, Germany). He has just taken up a new position at the Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Tilburg. Since 2000, he has also taught the bass clarinet class during the annual Julian Menéndez clarinet summer course in Ávila (Spain). Bok is also professor of free improvisation and has performed at several improvisation festivals (amongst others in Tallinn, Estonia). ''New Techniques for the Bass Clarinet'' (www.shoepair.com), which Bok wrote in 1989 (revised in 2011), is considered to be the standard work for instrumentalists and composers interested in extended techniques. In 2005 Bok was the initiator and artistic director of the first World Bass Clarinet Convention, which took place in Rotterdam and was attended by more than five hundred bass clarinetists from all over the world. Following his first piece ''Vinho do Porto Brasileiro'' (1997), Bok has written a large number of solo works and chamber music. His compositions are published by Shoepair Music. In recognition of his exceptional contribution to music, Henri Bok was made a knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion by King Willem Alexander in April 2014. In 2018 he received his PhD at Leiden University with a thesis entitled 'The deep-rooted microtonality of the bass clarinet'. Bok is an endorser for Buffet Crampon , D'Addario reeds, Pomarico, and Wiseman bells and cases.

Discography

*"Duo Contemporain", with Miquel Bernat. Globe, 1994 *"Duo Novair", with Miny Dekkers. Globe, 1995 *"Tube Makers", with Miquel Bernat. Globe, 1998 *''Music for Bass Clarinet and Piano'', with Rainer Klaas. Clarinet Classics, 1999. *''Worlds of Bass Clarinet''. Globe, 1999. *"Duo Clarones", with Luis Afonso Montanha. YBMusic, 2001 *''Wicked!''. Artistic License, 2003 *''BASSics'', with Rob Broek. Clarinet Classics, 2003. *''HeRo'', with Rob van Bavel. Bloomline, 2005. *''Henri Bok plays David Loeb''. Vienna Modern Masters, 2005. *"In a Nutshell". DVD Shoepair Music Prod., 2006 *"HeRo's Own", with Rob van Bavel. Shoepair Music Prod., 2008 *"HeRo's Heroes", with Rob van Bavel. Shoepair Music Prod., 2008 *"HeRo's Classics", with Rob van Bavel. Shoepair Music Prod., 2008 *"Windsongs", with Joaquin Meijide. Vienna Modern Masters, 2009 *"Voices of the Four Seasons", Vienna Modern Masters, 2012 *"Multitasking", Shoepair Music Prod., 2012

References

External links

Henri Bok Official Website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bok, Henri 1950 births Living people Dutch clarinetists Musicians from Rotterdam 21st-century clarinetists