Sebastian Heindl plays Marcel Dupré's Prelude and Fugue in B Major, op. 7, no. 1.
Recorded at St. Matthias Church Berlin.
See also Sebastian Heindl's artist spotlight.
As part of his first-place prize at the Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition, Sebastian Heindl is represented for three years in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.
Bryan Anderson plays Overture to “Der fliegende Holländer” by Richard Wagner, transcribed by Edwin Lemare. Recorded at Longwood Gardens, where he won the Firmin Swinnen Second Prize at the Longwood Gardens Organ Competition in 2019.
Anderson is the 2023 First Prize Winner of the Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition.
https://www.thediapason.com/news/longwood-gardens-international-organ-competition-1
Bryan Anderson, as part of his Longwood prize, is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.
www.concertartists.com
He is Director of Music at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church and School in Houston, Texas, where he trains all ages of choirs from elementary ages through adults, oversees 8 sung services weekly, and organizes a concert season of outside artists and in-house ensembles.
See his Artist Spotlight: https://www.thediapason.com/artists/bryan-anderson
Benjamin Sheen plays the Scherzetto by Percy Whitlock. Recorded at Merton College, Oxford, on the Dobson Opus 91 organ there (completed 2014).
http://www.dobsonorgan.com/html/instruments/op91_merton.html
Hailed by The New York Times as a “brilliant organist,” Benjamin Sheen is an established concert artist on both sides of the Atlantic and has recently been appointed Director of Music at Jesus College Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He was named the winner of the Pierre S. DuPont First Prize at the inaugural Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition in June 2013. That same year, he was also named second prize winner and the Jon Laukvik Prize winner of the 50th St. Albans Festival and International Organ Competition.
Benjamin Sheen will be on tour in the United States from mid-March through mid-April 2024.
Benjamin Sheen is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.
www.concertartists.com
See his artist spotlight at https://www.thediapason.com/artists/benjamin-sheen
Clive Driskill-Smith plays the Fugato from Variations on a Noël by Marcel Dupré.
Played on the Casavant organ at Broadway Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas.
Clive Driskill-Smith is the organist and choirmaster at All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Fort Worth, Texas. He is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.
www.concertartists.com
Performed on the Aeolian organ at Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, Pennsylvania: four manuals, 146 ranks, and 10,010 pipes.
Bryan Anderson is the 2023 First Prize Winner of the Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition, where he also received the Philadelphia AGO Chapter Prize for the best performance of a prescribed work by the judges. He also took prizes at the 2021 Canadian International Organ Competition and the 2019 Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition, and is a past first-prize winner of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition.
Bryan serves as director of music at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church and School in Houston, Texas, where he trains all ages of choirs from elementary ages through adults, oversees eight sung services per week, and organizes a concert season of guest artists and in-house ensembles. He serves as co-manager of the RSCM Gulf Coast choral residency program and has also worked as the Preparatory Choir Director for the Houston Children’s’ Chorus.
Bryan Anderson, as part of his Longwood prize, is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC. www.concertartists.com
He is a member of The Diapason’s “20 under 30” Class of 2017.
Tambourin, op. 6, no. 3, by Maurice Duruflé, transcribed by Bryan Anderson
There exist only a few non-organ or choral works by Duruflé; the largest in scale, and the only one conceived originally for orchestra without reference to an existing keyboard work, is the Trois Danses pour orchestre. While the entire work was published in 1932, the third movement, “Tambourin,” was written separately, five years earlier. According to Duruflé’s memoirs, referenced by Ronald Ebrecht, it was written to be background music for a “primitive” dance scene in a play by Édouard Dujardin. “Dujardin, whom Mallarmé described as a cross between a coarse seaman and a cow . . . met Duruflé and demonstrated his idea with wild gestures and guttural sounds.” After Duruflé completed the “Tambourin,” “the playwright found it not at all what he wanted and they never saw each other again.” This explains why Duruflé found a different use for the piece in the subsequent years!
Around 1932, Duruflé published not only the orchestral score of the Trois Danses, but a version for piano and a version for four-hands piano. With all three of these accessible, a huge amount of the work required for an organ transcription was already done, with many questions already answered as to how the composer would adapt orchestral writing to the keyboard. The “Tambourin” is unlike any other Duruflé work except the Opus 5 Toccata in its unrelenting energy and speed. Many touches of Stravinskian primitivism are obvious, as befits the work’s origins, but within the inter-war Parisian style; it might be the furthest from chant that he ever got in a composition!
Peter Richard Conte plays the Adagio in E Major by Frank Bridge on the Wanamaker Organ at Macy's, Center City, Philadelphia.
Peter Richard Conte was appointed Wanamaker Grand Court Organist in 1989 ̶ the fourth person to hold that title since the organ first played in 1911 – where he presides over the world’s largest fully-functioning musical instrument, at over 29,000 pipes, located at the Macy’s Department Store in the heart of downtown Philadelphia. The organ is heard in recital twice daily, six days per week, with Mr. Conte playing a majority of those recitals.
He is also Principal Organist at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, and since 1991, has served as Choirmaster and Organist of Saint Clement’s Church, Philadelphia, where he directs a professional choir in an extensive music program firmly rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He is also a frequent collaborator and soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a guest artist with the Philly Pops for their annual Christmas Spectacular.
Peter Richard Conte is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.
www.concertartists.com
See his artist spotlight at https://www.thediapason.com/artists/peter-richard-conte
Lynne Davis plays Hymne sur Veni Creator by Nicolas de Grigny (1671–1703) on the Marcussen & Søn organ in Wiedemann Hall at Wichita State University. The program was part of the Rie Bloomfield Organ Series, “Wednesdays in Wiedemann,” on September 8, 2021.
En taille à 5 (Plein jeu)
Fugue à 5
Duo
Récit de Cromorne
Dialogue sur les Grands Jeux
Lynne Davis is Robert L. Town Distinguished Professor of Organ at Wichita State University and an international concert organist. Though American by birth, Lynne Davis’s career has been richly steeped in French music, culture, aesthetics, and style. Her career was launched by taking First Prize at the 1975 St. Albans International Organ Competition in England—the eighth organist to receive that honor since the competition’s founding in 1962. Now a leading international concert artist and master teacher, she has performed in nearly every cathedral in France, numerous major cities throughout Europe, and from coast to coast in the United States. Her activities have included being a featured performer and lecturer at two national conventions and several regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists, giving master classes and lectures about French organ literature and its history, and serving as a member of Chartres, Dallas, St. Albans, and Taraverdiev (Russia) organ competition juries. In October 2017, she served as juror for the Canadian International Organ Competition in Montréal and was a featured recitalist during the competition week.
Lynne Davis is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.
See her artist spotlight: https://www.thediapason.com/artists/lynne-davis
The organ program at Wichita State University is the cover feature of the November 2022 issue of The Diapason:
https://www.thediapason.com/content/cover-feature-wichita-state-university
For information: www.wichita.edu/organ
