Orlando De Boeykens

Orlando de Boeykens is a Berlin-based tubist, improviser, and music educator born in Detroit, USA, and raised in Normal, Illinois. He began playing tuba at age 12 and later studied at the University of Music and Theater Hamburg (HfMT). Since 1990 he has worked as a freelance musician and since 1992 as a low brass educator. He is a core member of the Composers' Orchestra Berlin (COB) and has performed with the NDR Bigband under conductors including Dieter Glawischnig, Maria Schneider, and Jörg-Achim Keller, as well as with the Conduction Orchestra led by Tyshawn Sorey at the Berliner Jazzfest (2017). His theatre work includes productions at the Thalia Theater, Kammerspiele, and Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. He was awarded the Berlin Senate Prize for the CD production of Dorothy Reade's Gertrude Stein (2004). He performs regularly with performer Hans Unstern, and as part of Berlin Tubes Tuba Quartet and the tuba duo TubaduoJazz with José Dávila. In the field of experimental music, he collaborates with Iranian electronic musician Xeen (Zhina Ardalan) as the duo Boeykens/XEEN, premiering their performance at فرشی از آوا III (2021) — a live cross-border transmission between Berlin and Istanbul that celebrated noise, microtonality, reduction, and opulence.