Joeri Murk, Founder of DAJOERI Panflutes
Joeri Murk is a true inhabitant of the Grisons (mountainous canton in the East of Switzerland), who lived some time in a village in Grisons working as a teacher. There he learned to appreciate to spend his leisure time supporting the community and be culturally active. He remained faithful to this idea until today.
When he came to Zurich over thirty years ago (1968) in order to study Philosophy, Psychology and Education at the University of Zurich (he completed his study as a certified teacher for mentally handicapped children), he missed the cultural activities from his homeland in his evening leisure time.
At the same time, he discovered his love for the panflute and devoted his leisure time to this instrument, which he later developed into recreational activities for adults, as he was used from his homeland.
At that time there was far and wide nobody who could give him any information about the panflute. After intensive search, he was able to make contact to the Rumanian Grandmaster, Gheorge Zamfir, who introduced him in the following four years into the secrets of constructing panflutes.
In order to find good bamboo to build panflutes, he even traveled for several weeks into the Malaysian Jungle, lived with the natives and inquired on the spot the different type of bamboo.
His friends, study colleagues and acquaintances smiled at him for now using so much time developing panflutes. (At that time the instrument was virtually unknown and found favor neither in music-schools nor in any other cultural institution.) However, the panflute fascinatied him so much, that he decided to popularize this forgotten instrument for broad public. He asked music schools to help him to disseminate the instrument by offering panflute instruction in their program. They rejected his offer with the explanation, that the current popularity is only a fashion trend.For that reason, he addressed the broad public directly, so that they could decide if this instrument should be revived in our area or not.
With countless church-concerts by well-known organists, such as Hermann Hirs, Wolfgang Sieber and Ueli Meldau, broad public interest for the panflute was awakened over the years here in Switzerland and abroad.
His hopes came true. Despite all the predictions from experts, the panflute was welcomed by the public with open arms, fully accepted and loved. Through his studies he reached knowledge, which he passed along in his leisure time, with initially free of charge instructions for building and playing panflute.