Clive Driskill-Smith to All Saints’, Fort Worth

Clive Driskill-Smith

Clive Driskill-Smith is appointed organist of All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Fort Worth, Texas, succeeding Rick Grimes, who retires as organist of the church for the past 24 years. Driskill-Smith was awarded the Sheila Mossman Memorial Prize by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music before winning a Music Scholarship to Eton College in 1990. From 1992 to 1994, he played bassoon in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and in the National Youth Chamber Orchestra.

After a year as organ scholar at Winchester Cathedral and assistant organist at Winchester College, he went to Christ Church, Oxford University, as organ scholar. While at Christ Church, he was awarded the ARCM (Associate of the Royal College of Music) diploma in piano performance and the FRCO (Fellow of the Royal College of Organists) diploma with the Limpus, Shinn, and Durrant Prizes and the Worshipful Company of Musicians’ Silver Medal. He graduated in 1999 with first class honors in music and with the MPhil degree in 2001. A pupil of David Sanger and Hans Fagius, he was awarded a travelling scholarship by the Royal College of Organists in 1999 and the W. T. Best Scholarship by the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 2002; both of these funded further study in Europe with Marie-Claire Alain, Guy Bovet, Andrea Marcon, Luigi Tagliavini, and Harald Vogel.

Winner of the Royal College of Organists’ Performer of the Year Competition in 2000 and the Calgary International Organ Competition in 2002, Driskill-Smith regularly performs throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. In the UK he has played at the BBC Proms, the Royal Festival Hall London, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, and Bridgewater Hall, Manchester. He has had numerous tours in the United States. He frequently performs with percussionist Joseph Gramley, the duo known as Organized Rhythm. Clive Driskill-Smith and Organized Rhythm are represented by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.

For information: www.organist.org.uk and www.concertartists.com.

Photo credit: Clive Barda

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Appointments

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Appointments

St. Thomas Church and Choir School, New York City, has announced the appointment of Stephen Buzard and Benjamin Sheen as assistant organists. 

Stephen Buzard is a Master of Music candidate at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, where he studies organ with Thomas Murray and improvisation with Jeffrey Brillhart. He currently serves as organ scholar at Trinity on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut; as principal organist of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University; and as organist for Marquand Chapel, Yale Divinity School. 

Buzard earned his Bachelor of Music from Westminster Choir College in 2010, where he studied organ with Ken Cowan; he was organ scholar at Trinity Episcopal Church, Princeton, New Jersey, and director of music for the Episcopal Church at Princeton University. 

Buzard spent a year in England as senior organ scholar of Wells Cathedral. He was the winner of the 2010 Arthur Poister Competition and the 2009 Joan Lippincott Competition for Excellence in Organ Performance.

Recent recitals have included the 2012 Organ Historical Society Convention, the 2013 Midwinter Organ Conference at Baylor University, and the 2009 and 2013 conventions of the American Institute of Organbuilders. His premiere recording “In Light or Darkness,” available through Delos Records, has received wide critical acclaim. 

Benjamin Sheen is currently studying organ performance at the Juilliard School in New York. He was a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral, where he took up the organ at age 10. In 2003, he became the youngest person ever to give a recital in the cathedral’s Sunday evening series, at the age of just 13. At Eton College he studied organ with Alastair Sampson and David Goode, and presented recitals at venues including Liverpool Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and York Minster, toured the USA with the Eton College Choir, and gave solo concerts in New York, Denver, Washington, and Princeton University.

For three years, Sheen was organ scholar at Christ Church Cathedral. While studying at Oxford, he played numerous recitals in the U.K., Australia, and Germany. Sheen has appeared on BBC Radio Oxford and BBC Radio 3 with Christ Church Cathedral Choir, and has performed with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Nicholas Cleobury, and Duisburg Philharmonie with Jonathan Darlington.

Sheen is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, winning the Limpus, Durrant, and Frederick Shinn prizes, and was awarded the Worshipful Company of Musicians Silver Medal for 2011. For further information: 

www.SaintThomasChurch.org.

 

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