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Daws claims Academy role

Trombone player Isobel Daws has won a position at the Berlin Philharmonic's prestigious Karajan Academy in Berlin.

Isobel Daws
  Isobel Daws will start the next stage of her career in Berlin.

Isobel Daws, one of the UK's brightest trombone talents is heading to Germany on the next stage of her career.

The 2021 double Brass in Concert solo award winner has won a position at the prestigious Karajan Academy, the graduate arm of the world-renowned Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and will be moving to Berlin in just four weeks' time.

Honoured

Announcing the news on her Facebook page she said: "I'm absolutely honoured to have won the Karajan Academy position at the Berlin Philharmonic. I am so excited (but very scared) to start and move to Berlin in 4 weeks time and can't wait to see where life takes me!

Thanks so much to my teachers for helping me get to where I am!"

Complete musician

Founded in the early 1970's, the Karajan Academy was set up to provide an exclusive platform for graduate musicians to receive the best possible preparation for a career as a professional musician.

Positions in the Academy are amongst the most sought after in the orchestral world, with graduates invariably going on to perform with many of the world's leading professional orchestras. About one third of the members of the Berlin Philharmonic itself are former students of the Academy.

Peter Riegelbauer, head of the Karajan Academy, states that the young instrumentalists get a sense of what it means to be a "complete musician".

Peter Riegelbauer, head of the Karajan Academy, states that the young instrumentalists get a sense of what it means to be a "complete musician"4BR

Congratulations

According to its website, Isobel is the first British trombone player to win a place on the scheme. The current trombone scholars of Leonardo Fernandes from Portugal and Roberto de la Guia from Spain who work with Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra musicians Jesper Busk Sorensen and Thomas Leyendecker.

Congratulations on the achievement came from across the brass banding globe as well as from the likes of recently appointed Ulster Orchestra Principal Trumpet and former National Youth Band of Great Britain alumni Thomas Fountain, professional trumpeter Angela Whelan, composers Errolyn Wallen and Simon Dobson and fellow trombone stars Helen Vollam and Ian Bousfield.

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