A hare in the tower is not a tower hare, is it?

Three towers equal to three lives, actually four, no five, or do we say and write six lives? Insiders can immediately connect 'the hare' and 'the tower', but the younger generation meanwhile less so. Which hare then? Not a real one, but Jo Haazen, the unrivalled carillonneur and pedagogue. Just recently Jo Haazen's autobiography 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 case under the common title 'A hare in the tower'. Jo Haazen, a real jack-of-all-trades – well in the tower - you could well call a hare. What an active, complex life in general and what a rich, rare professional career where he can and may look back with justified pride. Haazen is currently a walking piece of carillon history of world importance. Antwerp It began as a 14-year-old teenager who felt called by those weekly, even daily sounding bells in the gothic lace tower of the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal in Antwerp. His mother was born on the Grote Markt, hardly closer to the bells. Jo, almost 'little Jo' because born on 24 December 1944 – he turns 80, just missed being a Christmas baby. One more day to wait, he couldn't. 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 he was appointed city carillonneur in Antwerp while between giving music lessons, learning Esperanto and also teaching there and playing carillon on his tower, he still 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 visitors, much hospitality came and the neighbourhood flourished until today. Unfortunately, the carillon no longer has the appeal it had during the 'Jo Haazen years', but the enthusiast still gets 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 has never really been able to 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-Romboutstoren, 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 slump, but also to make the Mechelen Monday evening concerts what they were before WWII under Jef Denyn or what he achieved in Antwerp. As for the concerts, it didn't work out. Mechelen is a completely different city, a completely different mentality and culture. The school, on the other hand, was transformed from a hole stinking of stale tobacco, full of stacked advertising leaflets, into a living internationally valued institution from which his successor is still reaping the fruits daily today. 100 students are now registered from multiple countries in this academic year 2024-'25. The level is equal to the major international conservatories. The five-yearly Queen Fabiola competition has even increased in quality. The Mechelen years ran smoothly as far as the school's success was concerned, but we also read between the lines that things were sometimes particularly difficult between a board of management that remained stuck in the past and sometimes provided heavy resistance. 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 travelled back and forth even more, no longer to the US or Japan as before, but to Russia. Parallel with Mechelen he also taught there. Saint Petersburg Everyone has to retire as a civil servant and Jo Haazen was as 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 pour all that freed-up time into his Russian project. Meanwhile, he had already been honoured with the 'Distinction of Friendship', the highest distinction 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 their wake and sometimes in the entourage missions in which businesspeople participated. Nowadays it is less busy as far as interest from the West is concerned given the political tensions and war in Ukraine. A shame because culture must transcend politics, even more, should unite. Before the war, Jo Haazen led 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 aforementioned cities and in the world.