Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Laura Bibbs Comes into Her Own on Tour with Harry Styles

27/09/2023

Laura Bibbs Comes into Her Own on Tour with Harry Styles The trumpeter and Boston Conservatory alum performed for record-breaking crowds across the U.S. and Europe.

By

Sarah Godcher Murphy

September 26, 2023

Trumpeter Laura Bibbs (fourth from right) joins Harry Styles and the rest of his band as they take a bow on stage at the RFC Arena in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

Lloyd Wakefield

This past July, Boston Conservatory alum Laura Bibbs (B.M. 19, trumpet) found herself traveling abroad in a city she never thought she would visit, performing live with an artist she never imagined getting the chance to meet, in front of a crowd so enormous she could scarcely believe it.

At the RFC Arena in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Bibbs was sharing the stage with pop superstar Harry Styles, wrapping up the European leg of his Love on Tour, before an audience of 102,000 people. From her place in the horn section, she had a bird's eye view of the landscape: acres of screaming fans who evidently knew every line of Styles's songs and felt obliged to prove it by singing along as loudly as they could.

Bibbs says it's hard to find words for the sense of unreality she felt while performing in that show-and the many others that she played with Styles over the course of the tour, filling the largest arenas in Europe, night after night. Amazing doesn't quite cut it.

I don't even know how to describe the euphoria, she says. It was like a dream.

The concert in Reggio Emilia was an appropriately grand finale to Bibbs's collaboration with Styles, having first performed with him at Coachella in April 2022. (To this day, she doesn't know who recommended her for that gig, but would love to thank the person.) She subsequently was invited to join the North American leg of Love on Tour-which included a record-breaking run of 15 sold-out shows at both Madison Square Garden in New York and the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. The European leg of the tour followed in summer 2023.

Alum Laura Bibbs performed live and joined the Love Band for the North American and European legs of Love on Tour.

Lloyd Wakefield

It's really been a beautiful blossoming into myself. I'm so prepared, I know it. It's inside of me. It's finally like I'm just not afraid.

-Laura Bibbs

Of course, the high-profile gig has been a huge boost to Bibbs's career, but it's also changed the scale of her self-confidence. As a musician who has struggled with performance anxiety, touring with Styles has been a particularly huge success. Meeting the challenges of performing night after night-and having a blast in the meantime-has altered her perception of pre-show nerves. What used to feel like fear she now calls fuel.

I'm having so much fun that I can't be super anxious about performing, because I love what Im doing, she says. It's really been a beautiful blossoming into myself. I'm so prepared, I know it. It's inside of me. It's finally like I'm just not afraid.

Bibbs says she has always struggled with performance anxiety, and it worsened during her college years when the process of self-critique would veer off into self-doubt. When I was a student, I was so hard on myself. I remember struggling with my own inner turmoil as this teenager coming into my 20s-and having really supportive teachers, she says. They care about your wellbeing. They care about shaping you into good musicians and good artists.

Bibbs also found herself questioning the classical music trajectory that she had once imagined would be her career path. At the Conservatory, she sought-and found-opportunities to experiment with improvised music and create works that felt more authentic to her own life experience than traditional repertoire did. Professor Pierre Hurel's improvisation workshop, for one, made a lasting impression on Bibbs.

Hurel says the workshop is often an outlet for Conservatory students who, like Bibbs, want to put the repertoire aside for a while and express their own ideas.

When you play from the heart-when you improvise-nothing is written, so it's kind of putting your guts on the table. You're really opening up for people to hear what you came up with, he says. When Laura had a successful improv-and she had many-you could see she was very happy in a profound way, like spiritually uplifted by the experience. She really wanted to say something meaningful with her trumpet.

The improv workshop also helps relieve students of the pressure to constantly improve their technique. It's very common for students to feel incomplete, 24/7, because by definition you work on things you have not mastered yet . But the reality is they already have a lot to offer, Hurel says.

After graduating from the Conservatory in 2019, Bibbs moved to New York, where she began a career as a freelance musician and pursued a master's degree in contemporary performance from Manhattan School of Music, under the mentorship of trumpeter and composer John Faddis. As a freelancer, she has played on numerous session recordings and has performed live with artists ranging from Faddis to the songwriter and producer Cautious Clay.

On October 1, Bibbs will return to Boston Conservatory for Brass Weekend, a festival of master classes, workshops, and performances by visiting artists. Bibbs will speak with Assistant Professor of Horn Anne Howarth for a presentation called, fittingly enough, Making It in Music.

Bibbs has good advice for current students, and it's exactly what she needed to hear when starting out as an undergraduate back in 2015.

I would totally say to just, like, calm down. To just take a second. To be patient, be forgiving.

There were times she wasn't exactly sure how she was going to make it, Bibbs says, but she always knew that she would make it. If you have tha
LINK: https://www.berklee.edu/berklee-now/news/laura-bibbs-comes-into-her-ow...
See more stories from berklee

North America Stories

14/05/2026

Sweetwater and Airstream Unveil Mobile Dolby Atmos Recording Studio

Sweetwater and Airstream have announced a custom-built Dolby Atmos mobile recording studio inside an Airstream trailer, set to tour music festivals, schools, tr...

14/05/2026

American Association of Professional Baseball Expands Broadcast Distribution for 2026 Season

The American Association of Professional Baseball (AAPB) has announced a new par...

14/05/2026

ESPN to Establish Week-Long Super Bowl LXI Broadcast Center on Santa Monica Beach

ESPN has announced plans to transform Santa Monica Beach into a broadcast hub du...

14/05/2026

Amagi Announces Major Upgrade to CLOUDPORT Cloud Broadcast Platform

Amagi has announced a significant update to Amagi CLOUDPORT, its cloud-based broadcast playout platform. The update includes 250-plus features shipped in FY25-2...

14/05/2026

Clear-Com to Showcase New Products and Platform Updates at InfoComm 2026

Clear-Com will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth N7005, June 17-19, Las Vegas Convention Center), introducing a new product that builds on Arcadia Central Station...

14/05/2026

Ikegami to Exhibit at BroadcastAsia 2026 with Two New Viewfinder Premieres

Ikegami will exhibit at BroadcastAsia 2026 (Stand 5D3-1, Singapore Expo, May 20-22), introducing two new viewfinders alongside its existing camera, control, and...

14/05/2026

dB Broadcast Delivers IP-Based OB Trucks for Cloudbass Featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Cameras

Grass Valley has announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside ...

14/05/2026

NAGRAVISION and WPBSA Launch Play Snooker Digital Platform

NAGRAVISION, a Kudelski Group company, has announced a partnership with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) to launch Play Snooker,...

14/05/2026

Belden To Acquire RUCKUS Networks for Approximately $1.85 Billion

Belden Inc. has announced a definitive agreement to acquire RUCKUS Networks from Vistance Networks for approximately $1.85 billion. The transaction has been app...

14/05/2026

NVIDIA Releases Content Localization Blueprint for AI-Assisted Dubbing and Speech Translation

NVIDIA has released the Content Localization Blueprint, a modular reference arch...

14/05/2026

Disney+ To Stream Banana Bowl Championship Live This October

Disney has announced that Disney will be the exclusive U.S. streaming home of the Banana Bowl, the Banana Ball league season championship, streaming live this ...

14/05/2026

Arkona and Manifold To Exhibit on Magna Systems Stand at BroadcastAsia 2026

Arkona technologies and technology partner manifold will demonstrate their production solutions on the Magna Systems and Engineering stand (Booth 5D1-1) at Broa...

14/05/2026

Haivision Webinar: New Broadcast Contribution Products Featuring Minor League Baseball Case Study

Haivision will host a webinar on Thursday, May 21 at 10 a.m. ET / 4 p.m. CET cov...

14/05/2026

The CW Network and ESPN Announce ACC Sublicense Agreement Through 2030-31 Season

The CW Network and ESPN have announced a sublicense broadcast agreement for The CW to televise ACC football and men's and women's college basketball gam...

14/05/2026

Detroit Pistons Ink Local Media Rights Deal With Scripps Sports

The agreement marks Scripps Sports' first NBA local rights deal...

14/05/2026

Report: Broadcasting Among Hardest-Hit Industries as AI Reshapes the Workforce

A new report from education-technology company Wiingy testing post-ChatGPT predictions against three years of real-world data has identified broadcasting as one...

14/05/2026

Madonna, Shakira, and BTS to Headline First-Ever FIFA World Cup Final Halftime Show

Global Citizen and FIFA have announced that Madonna, Shakira, and BTS will headl...

14/05/2026

Sundance Institute Names 2026 Episodic Lab Fellows

LOS ANGELES, CA, May 14, 2026 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the cohort selected for the 2026 Episodic Lab program, taking place at Dunaway ...

14/05/2026

The Wraith Shield Advantage: Transforming L3Harris Radios into AI-Enabled Counter-UAS Sensors

Soldiers equipped with Falcon IV radios will soon gain a sense-and-protect capa...

14/05/2026

Getting into the Space Nuclear Power Game with Next-Generation Technology

Artists concept of the L3Harris Next Gen RTG in flight configuration, designed to provide 250 watts of reliable power for decades-long missions in deep space....

14/05/2026

Nielsen data shows NZ vehicle advertisers are shifting gears as fuel pressures make EVs and hybrids an increasingly attractive option

Car ad spend rises sharply in March as more auto buyers turn to electric, hybrid...

14/05/2026

Is This the Year for Agentic AI's Breakout in Broadcast?

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

CBS LA, Los Angeles Rams Ink New TV Deal

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

CueScripts CueiT 4 0 Wins Futures Best of Show Award Pres...

CueScript's CueiT 4.0 Wins Future's Best of Show Award, Presented at 2026 NAB Show by TV Tech CueScript, a leading international developer of professio...

14/05/2026

Expert-Led Education Sessions and Development of Online T...

Expert-Led Education Sessions and Development of Online Training Program Accelerate IPMX Adoption and Deployment The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) to...

14/05/2026

Klvr rechargeable battery launches in the USA to cut cost...

Klvr is launching in the United States with a professional-grade rechargeable battery solution that cuts costs and improves performance across live entertainmen...

14/05/2026

Shooting into the depths of Bedlam with URSA Cine 17K 65

Shooting into the depths of Bedlam with URSA Cine 17K 65 Brie Clayton May 14, 2026 0 Comments Indie feature film paired digital 65mm capture with a Bl...

14/05/2026

WeMakeColor expands with Baselight, becoming hybrid color facility

WeMakeColor expands with Baselight, becoming hybrid color facility Caroline Shawley May 14, 2026 0 Comments Boutique Mexican-based studio integrates B...

14/05/2026

Berklee's Summer in the City Returns with Free Concerts Throughout Boston Area

Berklee's Summer in the City Returns with Free Concerts Throughout Boston Ar...

14/05/2026

Chelsey Green Named to Billboard's 2026 Women in Music List

Chelsey Green Named to Billboard's 2026 Women in Music List The Berklee professor and chair of the Recording Academy Board of Trustees joins other high-pr...

14/05/2026

Parks: Tubi, Roku Channel Are Top U.S. FAST Platforms

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

Study: Downstream Fiber Usage Outpaces Cable Broadband

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

NABLF to Honor Kidde With Corporate Leadership Award

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

LABF Awards Four 2026 Preservation Grants

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

Netflix Expands NFL Deal to Five Games

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

Scripps Seals Local Broadcast Deal with Detroit Pistons

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

14/05/2026

Glensound marks 60 years of audio innovation at Broadcast...

Six decades of products built around the people who use them...

14/05/2026

Vivid Broadcast builds agile remote production network ar...

Designed to embrace multiple production processes and deliver high-end live broadcast workflows, Vivid Broadcast has combined Calrec True Control 2.0 enabled co...

14/05/2026

Jigsaw24 and EVS Partner to Strengthen Future Proof UK Li...

Today, Jigsaw24, the UK's leading media equipment supplier and systems integrator, announces a new partnership with EVS, a global leader in live video techn...

14/05/2026

Berklee Convenes Leaders in AI, Music for Inaugural AIMS Symposium

Berklee Convenes Leaders in AI, Music for Inaugural AIMS Symposium The three-day event puts musicians at the center of the future of music creation, ethics, a...

14/05/2026

The Last Laugh: NIAJ Fest Wraps Another Successful Los Angeles Takeover

Back to All News The Last Laugh: NIAJ Fest Wraps Another Successful Los Angeles Takeover Entertainment 14 May 2026 GlobalUnited States Link copied to clipb...

14/05/2026

May 13, 2026

Scripps Research establishes endowed chair honoring renowned structural biologist Ian Wilson Keren Lasker to be inaugural chair holder May 13, 2026 LA JOLLA ...

14/05/2026

Sea You in the Cloud: Subnautica 2' Early Access Dives Onto GeForce NOW

Dive masks on - Subnautica 2 is making a splash on GeForce NOW day-and-date with launch, so members can plunge into the title's brand-new alien ocean from a...

13/05/2026

New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs

New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs Joel Pennington May 13, 2026 0 Comments New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...

13/05/2026

dB Broadcast Delivers New IP-based Cloudbass Sports OB Tr...

Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...

13/05/2026

Ikegami Announces its Broadcast Asia 2026 Innovations

Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...

13/05/2026

XRSA and FISE Partner to Deliver Immersive Action Sports...

FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...

13/05/2026

Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Built-In Power Zoom Lens

Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...

13/05/2026

Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Commencement Ceremony

Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...

13/05/2026

CBS Boston to Air CCBL Baseball

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...