Three towers equal to three lives, actually four, no five, or do we say and write six lives? Insiders can immediately link 'the hare' and 'the tower', but the younger generation meanwhile less so. Which hare then? Not a real one, but Jo Haazen, the unmatched carillonneur and pedagogue.
Jo Haazen's autobiography has just appeared as a bronze-working tower climber, forced to be a 'climber' because there are hardly any carillons to be found that are not in a tower. Three towers largely determine the life of the artist. For each tower, Jo Haazen wrote a book volume – Antwerp, Mechelen and Saint Petersburg, collected in a beautiful book set under the shared title 'A Hare in the Tower'.
Jo Haazen, a real jack-in-the-box – well, in the tower - can certainly be called a hare. What an active, complex life in general and what a rich, rare professional career that he can and may justly look back on with pride. Haazen is currently a walking piece of carillon history of world importance.
Antwerp
It started as a 14-year-old teenager who felt called by those weekly, even daily sounding bells in the gothic lacework tower of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp. His mother was born on the Grand Place, could hardly be closer to the bells. Jo, almost 'little Jo' since December 24, 1944 – he turns 80, barely missed being a Christmas baby. One more day to wait, he could not. Well, that's how it goes with people who are always busy with 1,001 things.
As a young man he went to the carillon school in Mechelen with Staf Nees. He was, at least for carillon, a brilliant student and barely grown up was appointed city carillonneur in Antwerp while, between giving music lessons, learning Esperanto and also teaching there and playing the carillon on his tower, he won the International Carillon Competition of the Holland Festival three times.
Jo developed the Monday evening concerts in Antwerp into legendary evenings. The run-down surroundings attracted tens of thousands of listeners, much hospitality came and the neighborhood came to life until today. Unfortunately, the carillon no longer has the appeal it had during the 'Jo Haazen years', but lovers still get plenty to enjoy. Read more about the Antwerp story in the first book volume.
Mechelen
Saying goodbye to Antwerp was very difficult and heavy for Jo Haazen. He could never really come to terms with that farewell, but the challenge of becoming director of the Royal Carillon School and at the same time city carillonneur of Mechelen, where a powerful new carillon had just been installed in the Sint-Rombout Tower, was ultimately too great. After many phone calls, even at 3 o'clock in the morning before the deadline for candidacy expired, Jo Haazen gave in and would go for it. With his merit, experience and knowledge, he wanted not only to get the school out of the doldrums, but also to make the Mechelen Monday evening concerts what it was before WWII under Jef Denyn or what he realized in Antwerp.
As for the concerts, it did not work out. Mechelen is a completely different city, a completely different mentality and culture. The school, on the other hand, was transformed from a place reeking of stale tobacco, full of stacked advertising newspapers, into an internationally valued living institution that still reaps its fruits today under its successor. 100 students from multiple countries are enrolled this 2024-25 academic year. The level is equal to the great international conservatories. The five-yearly Queen Fabiola competition has even increased in quality.
The Mechelen years went smoothly as far as the school's success was concerned, but we also read between the lines that it was sometimes particularly difficult with a board of directors that remained stuck in the past and sometimes provided heavy opposition. Meanwhile, contact came with Russia, where in Saint Petersburg they wanted to thoroughly tackle the carillon of Tsar Peter the Great. It became a new instrument. Jo Haazen traveled even more, no longer to the US or Japan as before, but to Russia. In parallel with Mechelen, he also taught there.
Saint Petersburg
Everyone has to retire as a civil servant and Jo Haazen was as a city carillonneur a municipal civil servant and as director he was an employee of the Ministry of Education. Retirement then. You would say more free time? Jo Haazen would pump all that freed-up time into his Russian project. Meanwhile, he had already been honored with the 'Order of Friendship', the highest honor a non-Russian can receive. In 2006 he was appointed professor at the Faculty of Arts, Department of Organ, Harpsichord and Carillon in Saint Petersburg.
Jo Haazen developed a concert tradition, countless tourists found and find him there, politicians from his own country went there with many journalists in tow and various entourages including missions in which businessmen participated. Nowadays it is less busy regarding interest from the West given political tensions and the war in Ukraine. A pity because culture must transcend politics, even more, should connect. Before the war, Jo Haazen trained not only Russians but also Ukrainians in Saint Petersburg in that city of palaces. Let us hope that after the end of hostilities in an atmosphere of peace and brotherhood the Fine Arts may prevail.
A Hare in the Tower, three-part autobiography of carillonneur Jo Haazen - Antwerp, Mechelen and Saint Petersburg.
Forewords by Bart De Wever, mayor of Antwerp; Marc Hendrickx, former first alderman of Mechelen and Natalia Dementieva, former minister of Culture of the Russian Federation.
A richly illustrated publication with six hundred pages, featuring unprecedented stories from carillon life in the above-mentioned cities and in the world.
