Werner Herbers
Werner Herbers has been principal oboist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for thirty five years. As a classical soloist he has appeared with conductors such as Haitink, Harnoncourt, Berio, Leitner, De Waart, Vonk and Chailly. As a jazz oboist he performed among others with the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw.
Until the group disbanded in 1988, Herbers was also first oboist in the Netherlands Wind Ensemble for over 25 years, many of them in his additional capacity as Joint Artistic Director. With this group he undertook many tours all over Europe, Japan, Australia and the United States. In 1990 Herbers founded a new group, the Ebony Band. This group, consisting of members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, has specialised on forgotten and unknown music from between the two world wars. With this repertoire the Ebony Band has appeared in New York, Toronto, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Warsaw and Paris. Several of the ensemble’s recordings (Wolpe/ Schulhoff/Revueltas) produced by Channel Classics, Decca and BVHaast, have been received with highly acclaimed international awards. The extended Ebony (Big) Band, conducted by Gunther Schuller and Werner Herbers, has also performed and recorded a number of special jazz or jazz-influenced concerts.
As a conductor Herbers has appeared in New York City in a program at the 92ndY (‘Stefan Wolpe and Contemporaries’) and with the German Ensemble Oriol and the ensemble recherche in Berlin, Freiburg and Vienna. In Amsterdam (Concertgebouw) Herbers led the world famous Dutch jazz and pop orchestra The Metropole Orchestra Furthermore, he conducted several Dutch symphony orchestras, the winds of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and a Stan Kenton Alumni Band at the 2009 L.A. Jazz Festival.
For many years, Werner Herbers has been professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He also worked as a coach at the Pacific Music Festival (Sapporo/Japan), the Canton International Summer Academy (Guangzhou/China), the Lindenbaum Festival (Seoul/S.Korea), all of them with Charles Dutoit being the chief conductor and at the Banff Music Centre.
