Tine Thing Helseth

Trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth (TEE-ne Ting HEL-set) is internationally popular as a concerto soloist and also has led two small ensembles of her own. In addition to traditional classical trumpet repertory and brass ensemble music, Helseth performs works by contemporary composers and has ventured into such genres as jazz and tango. Helseth was born in Oslo on August 18, 1987. She took up the trumpet at seven and joined her school band. In her youth, she was a fan of the Spice Girls. Her musical education has been exclusively Norwegian. Helseth entered Oslo's Barratt Due Institute of Music in 2002, remaining there until 2009 and then spending three years at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Her principal teachers were Heidi Johannessen of the Norwegian National Opera Orchestra and Arnulf Naur Nilsen of the Oslo Philharmonic. By the time she was 20, Helseth had a list of prizes under her belt, including Newcomer of the Year at the Norwegian Grammy Awards (she was not only the first classical musician to win but the first nominated). In 2007, she appeared at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, and that year, she began her recording career with an album of trumpet concertos by Haydn, Albinoni, Hummel, and Johann Baptist Georg Neruda on the Simax label. In 2009, Helseth began a stint as a Borletti-Buitoni Trust fellow, and after that, major bookings came her way. Helseth has appeared with such ensembles as the Vienna Symphony, the Liverpool Philharmonic, and the Shanghai Symphony, as well as many major Norwegian ensembles. Her recital career has taken her on multiple trips to the U.S., where she has appeared at the National Gallery of Art, Carnegie Hall, and Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth, and she toured the U.S. with her all-female brass ensemble tenThing in 2019. Helseth is also the leader of TTHQ (the Tine Thing Helseth Quintet), which performs jazz and tango music. In the early 2010s, she recorded several solo albums for EMI Classics, and since then, she has recorded for Grappa Musikkforlag, Dacapo, and Lawo Classics, where she issued the album Magical Memories for Trumpet and Organ in 2021. Helseth returned on Lawo Classics in 2023 with the recital Seraph, and in 2024, she and the tenThing Brass Ensemble released She Composes Like a Man, an album of works by female composers. ~ James Manheim, Rovi