Dan Laurin

Dan Laurin (January 19, 1960 in Jönköping, Sweden) is a renowned Swedish recorder player widely regarded as one of the greatest recorder virtuosos in the world.

Laurin studied under Ulla Wijk, Paul Nauta and Eva Legêne at the Conservatories of Odense and Copenhagen from 1976 to 1982.

Since 1980 he has performed on stage and recorded with the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble, the Bach Collegium Japan, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Polish ensemble 'Arte dei Suonatori', and many other ensembles, with regular tours of Japan, the United States, Israel, Australia and across Europe.

Laurin compliments his work as a performing musician by maintaining an active teaching schedule and includes professorships at The Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense; The Conservatory of Music in Gothenburg, Sweden and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen.

Recently, Laurin was appointed professor of the recorder and teaches at Stockholm's Royal College of Music and at Trinity College in London.

He researches and lectures on many areas of interpretation, music aesthetics, recorder acoustics, sound techniques, and performance issues.

Laurin is acknowledged as the foremost player of the recorder active today.

He has explored and widened the sonic possibilities of the recorder and has an unequalled technical facility.

His playing explores a wide palette of tonal colours and a striking control of dynamics; the expressiveness of his playing is marked by a freedom in moving from the mutest pianissimo to a clear forte within hairbreadth spaces of time.

His interpretations combine thoughtful musical structure with highly wrought ornamentation and a sometimes wild sense of fantasy.

His 1994 album The Swedish Recorder, earned him a prize from the Swedish Association of Composers.

This, along with three other albums (The Japanese Recorder, Vivaldi Recorder Concertos and Telemann/Bach (Fantasias/Solo works)) resulted in a Grammy award.

Commissions include recorder concertos by Daniel Börtz, Henrik Strindberg, Fredrick Österling, as well as by Chiell Meijering, Vito Palumbo and Christofer Elgh.

Laurin is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and in 2001 he received the medal 'Litteris et Artibus' from the King of Sweden.

Laurin's unique interpretative style is perhaps best exhibited in his many recordings of Vivaldi, culminating in a recording of the Four Seasons released in August 2006.

His efforts to broaden the repertoire and to gain for the recorder the status of a concert instrument together with a large orchestra has resulted in several concertos that are already considered classics.

In 2011, he received the "Interpretation Prize" from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

Laurin collaborated with the Australian instrument maker Fred Morgan to advance recorder design, and this resulted in a succession of reconstructions of instruments from earlier times, including an instrument that was designed specifically for Laurin's 9-CD recording of Jacob van Eyck's monumental Der Fluyten Lust-hof (BIS-CD-775/780), the largest work ever written for a wind instrument.

Laurin has trained some of the leading young recorder virtuosi in Europe and beyond.

Laurin is married to harpsichord and piano player Anna Paradiso.

His command of improvisation within a strong understanding of harmonic structure brings to 17th- and 18th-century music something of the spirit of jazz masters such as Charlie Parker.

Yet, Laurin's interpretations remain sensitive to the aesthetic and spirit of older music, as his many thoughtful essays on his repertoire reveal.