Stanislav Masaryk

Biography

“The artistic beauty we musicians are surrounded by cannot be compared with anything else in the world that one can experience.”

A native of Gbely, Slovakia, Stanislav Masaryk comes from a musical family. He began playing the trumpet at age nine. His first successes at competitions began just two years later, and with them came the idea of a career as a professional musician. At age 13 he began taking lessons in the studio of Michal Janoš at the Bratislava Conservatoire as a special pupil, and a year later he enrolled for his first year of study at the school. Later, he continued his studies at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava under the guidance of Rastislav Suchan.

He has received many awards. He placed second (Banská Bystrica, 2009) and then first (Košice, 2012) at the Slovak Conservatoire Competition in the trumpet category; in 2015 he received the Yamaha Scholarship Award. Next came the title of overall winner at the international competition Brno Brass (2017), where he won in a field of more than 60 trumpet players from this country, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. In 2022 the Music Centre honoured him with the Ľudovít Rajter Prize.

From 2009 to 2020 he played in the jazz ensemble Bratislava Hot Serenaders with the bandmaster and trumpet player Juraj Bartoš, and from 2012 to 2015 he played in the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. From 2012 to 2019 with brief interruptions, he played principal trumpet in the opera orchestra of the Slovak National Theatre, and in 2017/18 he held the same position at the National Theatre in Prague. At that time he began playing with the Czech Philharmonic on a part-time basis.

He became a full-time member of the orchestra in September 2020. As his greatest experiences in concerts here, he mentions performing the Slavonic Dances with Sir Antonio Pappano and the symphonies of Mahler with Semyon Bychkov. “But I also remember a concert in Litomyšl with Tomáš Netopil when the glass lens from a spotlight over the stage fell on my head during the Dvořák Violin Concerto”, he adds, recalling something less positive. He has also appeared as a soloist with the Czech Philharmonic under the baton of Tomáš Netopil and Semyon Bychkov. Thanks to cooperation with the orchestra of the Royal Academy of Music, in 2022 he led a three-day masterclass in London.

He appears regularly as a soloist with the Slovak Philharmonic, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the Armenian National Philharmonic, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bohdan Warchal Slovak Chamber Orchestra, the State Philharmonic in Košice, Cappella Istropolitana, the State Chamber Orchestra in Žilina, the chamber orchestra and symphony orchestra of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, and the Slovak Youth Orchestra. As an orchestral musician, he occasionally plays with the Slovak Philharmonic or with the Fats Jazz Band. 2023 saw the release of his debut CD “Postcards”.

While he admits that musicians almost never get time off because “after a few weeks without being in contact with the instrument, it takes too long to get back into acceptable shape”, he at least relaxes thanks to his hobbies like cooking, team sports, following politics and social affairs, and Formula 1.