Biography
Harpsichordist, conductor and composer Jörn Boysen was born in Lübeck, Germany, in 1976. After his studies at the Musikhochschule Lübeck he went to the Netherlands where he studied with Tini Mathot and Ton Koopman at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. As founder and director of Musica Poetica, guest conductor, soloist or continuo player, he regularly performs in Germany, the Netherlands and France.
He was invited to European festivals as the Festival Mitte Europa, Göttinger Händel Festspiele, Delft Chamber Music Festival, Itinéraire Baroque and the Utrecht Festival Oude Muziek. Boysen worked with Alina Ibragimova, Lisa Ferschtman and regularly records and performs with Antoinette Lohmann (Furor Musicus).
Critics describe his harpsichord playing as „… affective…, dynamic…“ and „… of délicatesse…“.
Boysen conducted productions of the O.T. Opera Rotterdam (Orfeo Intermezzi, 2005) and the Utrechtse Spelen (Molière’s/Charpentier’s Imaginary Invalid, 2009 and 2011) for whose productions he has also composed music. In 2012 he was music director of Opéra Mosset in France. For that production he arranged J. Offenbach’s Belle Hélène for salon orchestra.
“[Boysen’s completion of Bach’s St Mark Passion] proved to be holistic, stylistically consistent and emotionally convincing. Not only [his] profound knowledge of baroque music contributed to this, but also his unconditional talent, and I am only too enthusiastic about this experience.”
In addition, Boysen composed various orchestral, chamber and vocal works and music for harpsichord. His song cycle Schattenwind on texts from the eponymous collection of poems by German painter and writer Rainer Erhard Teubert has been premiered in March 2010 in Boysen’s home town Lübeck.
In 2011 Boysen completed the first version of Bach’s St Mark Passion from 1731. He composed all missing recitatives, turba-choirs and arias. Boysen was the first to consistently follow historical procedures in the composition process. The press wrote about this completion: “Finally a convincing alternative to all the other reconstructions. It is even a serious alternative to Bach’s own St John and St Matthew Passions.” In the spring of 2022, he presented the completion of the second version from 1744, which Bach had expanded by two arias.
Boysen’s works have been commissioned and performed by the Nederlands Bach Society (NL), Musica Poetica (NL), Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado (USA), soloists of Pratum Integrum (RU) of the Berlin Philharmonics (D) and the Residentie Orchestra in The Hague (NL), amongst others.
In addition to his work as a performing musician, as artistic director of the concert organisation Musica Antica, Boysen was responsible for early music programming in The Hague for twelve years until 2023. He teaches at the Utrecht Conservatory.