Lucienne Renaudin Vary

Trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary may be called a prodigy, making major concert appearances in French venues throughout her teenage years and releasing her first major-label album at 18. Her training and her recordings on the Warner Classics label are notable for their mixture of classical, jazz, and pop repertory.
Vary was born in Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire, France, on January 28, 1999. Showing talent early on the trumpet, she enrolled at the Conservatory of Le Mans in 2007, taking classical trumpet lessons from Philippe Lafitte and jazz instruction from Santiago Quintans. At the Conservatoire de Paris, she matriculated at first as a classical trumpet student under Clément Garrec, but in 2017, she added jazz and improvisation to her course of study. Vary’s record of strong competition showings began in 2010 with a win at the Selmer Le Parnasse contest, and in November of that year, she finished third in the European Competition for Young Trumpet Players, even though the contest was for players 14 through 17, and she was only 11.
Vary made her first festival appearances in 2012 at the Eurochestries and Annecy festivals. In 2013, she appeared on French television in a tribute to trumpeter Maurice André, and by 2014, she had a busy festival schedule that included appearances in Colmar, Antibes, and Royan, performing at the last-named in a duet with star trumpeter Alison Balsom. She also gave her first major jazz concert that year, in Le Mans, at the city’s Nuit de chimères event. Since then, she has divided her time roughly equally between classical and jazz appearances. Vary won a Victoire de la musique classique award in 2016 in the category of Instrumental Soloist Revelation. Vary made a guest soloist appearance at the Cartagena Music Festival in Colombia in 2017, becoming the festival’s youngest-ever soloist and making her debut in the Americas. The 2019-2020 season saw Vary appear with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong and tour Japan and Southeast Asia. She has continued to play with both classical symphony orchestras, including the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and with jazz musicians. She opened for trumpeter Wynton Marsalis at the Jazz in Marciac Festival in 2018, and she can often be heard in late-night jazz club sets.
In 2013, Vary made her recording debut on an album by trumpeter Guy Touvron, playing a work by Benedetto Marcello and joining Touvron on two-trumpet concertos by Saverio Mercadante and G.F. Handel. In 2016, she was signed to the Warner Classics label and issued her solo debut, The Voice of the Trumpet, the following year. The program combined classical works, few of them standards, with jazz treatments of Broadway hits. Vary returned in 2019 with the classical-pop release Mademoiselle in New York and followed that up in 2021 with Piazzolla Stories, featuring works by the tango master and other composers who influenced him. ~ James Manheim