This year’s Breda Jazz Festival is not only about cheerful notes, but also about the future of music. Because behind the jazz sounds lies a growing problem: fewer and fewer young people are choosing an instrument such as trumpet, trombone or saxophone. In Brabant, teachers, musicians and conductors are therefore sounding the alarm: “It is only structurally getting worse.”
“It is really worrying,” says Breda conductor Daan Bogers of the National Youth Orchestra. “If you need a trumpeter, trombonist or saxophonist now, you can search for a long time. It’s almost impossible to find them anymore.”
Bogers sees the problem every day. Where young musicians used to have to fight for a spot through auditions, there are now gaps in the line-up of big bands and orchestras. And that is not an incident, but a trend. “It’s not just a blip,” he says. “It’s stable bad and only getting worse.”
Music teacher and trumpeter Paul Luijkx also recognizes that image. He has been teaching in secondary education in Breda for more than thirty years and has seen the change slowly but surely. “When I started, I had a complete big band at school,” he says. “Four trumpets, four trombones, all the trimmings. Now I don’t even have one trumpet player at school. That says enough.”
According to both musicians, the cause lies deep. Music education has become less accessible due to significant government cuts and rising costs. “It is simply too expensive for many parents,” says Luijkx. “An instrument, lessons… that adds up quickly.”
In addition, there is also another reality: young people have more choices than ever. For example, they often prefer to play with their phone rather than on an instrument. “And you have the change in mentality,” Bogers adds. “Young people want everything quickly and are less often willing to work on something over a long period of time. But it takes a while before you are good enough to play in an orchestra or band and it really becomes fun.”
The tide must be turned and that is why the Breda Jazz Festival, for example, is once again focusing strongly on youth and young people this year. School bands are given a stage, there are educational projects and instruments are collected for children who cannot afford their own.
According to Bogers and Luijkx, that is also the key to the solution. Music education must become accessible again. Affordable, accessible and structural. “No separate, demarcated projects,” explains Paul Luijkx. “Because you can’t learn to play an instrument in three months. So more subsidy, yes.”
Bogers is clear: “If we don’t do anything now, it will soon become a real problem to keep orchestras afloat. There are almost no Dutch students at the conservatories anymore and I believe that the National Youth Orchestra consists of only thirty percent Dutch. That is a sign that something needs to be done!”
Look here when Daan Bogers and Paul Luijkx perform with his students at the Breda Jazz Festival.
