The Faculty of Music of the HfK is one of the top conservatories in Germany, and offers a wide range of opportunities, in very nice facilities right in the center of the beautiful historic city of Bremen. As is the norm for higher education in Germany, the programmes at the HfK are tuition-free, including for international students.
General website: https://www.hfk2020.de/en/
Info for applications: https://www.hfk-bremen.de/en/t/bewerbung/n/application
The school is one of the largest and most respected centers for Early Music, with degrees in sackbut/baroque trombone offered there since many years, and also has a vibrant Jazz department. Last fall, the HfK reopened its modern orchestral brass department after a 20-year absence where they only had strings and woodwinds as far as orchestral instruments go. It's a brand new department with motivated teachers and the full support of the school, and on the early music side both the cornetto teacher and myself are also newly appointed and bring our load of ideas, so the coming years will be full of exciting projects for brass players. It is really a good moment to come study there.
We offer Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Performance (classical, Jazz and early music), Composition, Music Education, Music Theory and Church Music. Students are allowed (and encouraged) to take a specialization minor in early music, new music or chamber music. So it is possible, for example, to do a Master's in modern trombone while also having individual sackbut lessons and ensemble sessions at a high level.
Teachers are Mattias Weiß for modern trombone (principal trombone of the Landestheater Detmold), myself for baroque trombone, and Sebastian Hoffmann and Ingo Lahme for Jazz trombone. Other brass faculty include Jens Plücker (horn, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester) and Christopher Dicken (trumpet, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Deutschen Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and Lucern Festival Orchestra) on the modern side, and Susan Williams (trumpet) and Josue Melendez (cornetto) on the early music side, both world-class experts and musicians.
Bremen is a liberal city and a major cultural hub for Northern Germany, with a strong freelance music scene. It's a proper city without being too big (population around 550K), and is close to other major centers like Hamburg and Hanover. It is also home to both Thein and Lätzsch, so it's really a bit of trombone paradise.
