Andreas Böhlen is a recorder player with a broad spectrum. His fields of activity include early music as well as contemporary music and jazz. His specialty is improvisation in various historical styles of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. He leads his own early music formations with Theatrum Affectuum and Satyr's Band. He is also a member of various chamber music formations throughout Europe and maintains collaborations with renowned orchestras. He is also active as a jazz saxophonist.
Andreas joined Ulrike Petritzki and Günter Höller as a young student at the conservatories in Bremen and Cologne, and studied at the conservatory in Amsterdam with Walter van Hauwe and Paul Leenhouts. This was followed by studies in musicology in Bologna (Italy). After graduating with honors with a master's degree in historical improvisation under Rudolf Lutz at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, he completed a master's degree in jazz saxophone with Domenic Landolf in 2011, also at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, after previous studies on this instrument in Amsterdam.
Andreas is a multiple prize winner at Jugend musiziert, Jugend jazzt, the International Recorder Days Engelskirchen, the Vriendenkrans Concours (Amsterdam) and the Van Wassenaer Concours (The Hague). He has also produced for various television and radio stations, such as NDR, Deutschlandfunk, ORF Styria, 3FM Melbourne, NHK (Japan) and ABC Classics (Australia) and has given concerts throughout Europe, Japan, the USA and Australia.
Under his own direction he released the CDs Sammartini sonatas for recorder and basso continuo Vol.1, La meraviglia parlante, Most ravishing things, Satyr's Band, Airborne, Windgesang and Cruise. In addition, there are numerous productions under the direction of others.
Activities as researcher, educator and curator complete his profile. For example, he lectures on performance practice and improvisation and teaches recorder at the University of Arts Graz and at the Zurich University of the Arts. In September 2021 became professor of recorder at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.