Jonathan Dimmock recitals and recording

Jonathan Dimmock toured in Europe, playing nine recitals in five countries. Upon his return to the U.S., he accompanied the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and Susan Graham, in two performances of the Duruflé Requiem.

Dimmock has released a new Bach CD, “Bach in Haarlem,” recorded on the Christian Müller organ at the Bavo Kerk in Haarlem, the Netherlands. The CD is available on Loft and through Naxos.

Organist and choir director at St. Ignatius Church and Congregation Sherith Israel, both in San Francisco, Dimmock won a Grammy Award for his work with the San Francisco Symphony. He has recorded nearly 40 CDs, and has founded a new organization, entitled Resonance, which uses music in international conflict resolution.

For information: www.JonathanDimmock.com. 

Related Content

Catching up with Stephen Tharp

Reflections ten years later

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is editorial director of The Diapason. 

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An interview with Stephen Tharp appeared a decade ago in The Diapason (“A conversation with Stephen Tharp: Catching up with a well-traveled recitalist,” January 2004). At that time, Tharp’s discography included six recordings, and he had made over twenty intercontinental tours. Among the topics discussed were Tharp’s many concert tours, his advocacy of new music, and interest in transcriptions. In the decade since, Tharp has continued his travels and performances, and received many accolades. He presently resides in New York City, where he serves as associate director of music at the Church of Our Saviour. Stephen Tharp will be the featured performer at the closing recital of 2014’s American Guild of Organists national convention in Boston.
 
 
Joyce Robinson: Our previous interview’s title called you a “well-traveled recitalist,” and that seems truer than ever today. Tell us about your concert tours (and how you keep track of all those recitals!).
 
My grandfather, who was director of personnel management at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Chicago for some 40-plus years, and also a lecturer at both Northwestern University and University of Chicago post-World War II, was a real business model for me. He was the ultimate paper hoarder, keeping track of all of his correspondence, lectures, and so forth, throughout his life. For better or worse, he taught me to keep a paper record of everything I’d accomplished. 
 
Of course, I let go of a great deal with time, but, as far as concert programs go, I have saved one copy of everything I have ever played. Consequently, after 1,400 concerts, I am glad I can look back, trace them, and keep track—like keeping a diary. My 1300th solo recital was at St. Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, on their very large Marcussen organ, in November 2008. A few days later, in St. Martin, Dudelange, Luxembourg, was the concert that coincided with my Jeanne Demessieux Complete Organ Works CD set (Aeolus Recordings) “release party,” where the recording was officially made available to the public for the first time. It remains my largest recording project to date, which I will discuss more a little later. The recording led directly to a series of three concerts in October 2010 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, wherein I played the complete organ works of Demessieux.
 
On July 30, 2013, I performed my 1400th solo concert, for the organ festival in La Verna, Tuscany (some of which is up on YouTube). This is the place, on top of a mountain and a 90-minute drive from Florence, where Francis of Assisi spent his later years on land that was bequeathed to him. It is a picturesque spot surrounded by forests untouched for some 900 years; in the center is a basilica where there is a regular summer festival of organ concerts catering to an immense tourist crowd that packs the house for recitals starting at 9 p.m. (when the temperature cools down enough for a full church to be tolerable). A small group of friends and colleagues celebrated afterwards with a private meal that included regional wines.
 
What is awesome for the organ in central European culture is that festivals like this, well attended, grow on trees. In Germany alone, you could hit a series every weekend for two years without repeating yourself—funding in place, quite often new organs, and audiences that support its continuation. There seems something about Old World culture that’s founded in the deepest roots, centuries of traditions under them, that maintains a thriving life no matter what the come-and-go cultural shifts of any given generation—a kind of condensed richness around which you can build an entire life. 
 
As for my own tours, 1,400 concerts means too many to name. Standouts include the Gewandhaus, Leipzig; the Igreja de Lapa in Porto, Portugal; Victoria Hall, Geneva; the Frauenkirche, Dresden (which was only recently reconstructed); the inaugural organ week of the new Seifert organ at the Cathedral in Speyer, Germany, with its 14-second acoustic—a whole new character for Alain’s Trois Danses; Ben van Oosten’s glorious festival in The Hague; twice at the Berlin Cathedral, with another concert set for summer 2015; Cologne Cathedral (with its 5,000 regular concertgoers during the summer Orgelfeierstunden, encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs if necessary and seat themselves in the aisles, which they do, going wild over a program of Guillou, Alain, Dupré, and Litaize); the summer festival at St. Bavo, Haarlem (there are no words for the experience of playing this organ); playing the de Grigny Messe on the Dom Bedos at Ste. Croix in Bordeaux, and so on. In addition to that, my one and only action-packed trip without jetlag adjustment, over six days, for concerts in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Riga. Twice to Hong Kong, twice to Korea, twice to Australia. Every memorable moment outside the box would take a book. But connect all the dots over time and it’s the richest and most diverse menu of experiences I could ever have imagined. And as an American, it is seeing the forest from outside the trees, in spades, and that has determined a great deal for me.
 
 
You’ve also been busy with recordings. Would you summarize these, and tell us about your experiences making them? 
 
This is a discussion of but a few of my projects. Ultimately, audio and video recordings are one’s most powerful tools. How one can spread the word on Facebook, iTunes, or YouTube puts global exposure at your fingertips, which is wonderful. Listening as a child to LPs of many organs, I often fantasized about getting to these instruments one day, either to perform on them or record them myself. One of my greatest battery chargers, the kind that continues to inspire in the long term, has been recording a number of these landmark instruments, both for JAV Recordings and the Aeolus label in Germany. 
 
The first opportunity like this was St. Sulpice, Paris, where I recorded in October 2001, a somewhat nervous traveler given the horrific events of September 11 the month before—and amplified by a flight over to Paris on a plane that was mostly empty. In 2005 I was back in St. Sulpice for two more projects. A large choir, comprising several groups, was assembled to record the Widor Mass, op. 36, for choir and two organs (main and choir organ), which was never before recorded in St. Sulpice. With Daniel Roth at the grand orgue, Mark Dwyer and I played musical benches with the orgue de choeur in the front of the church. In the two days that followed that project, I had the great pleasure of recording Dupré’s Le Chemin de la Croix there. Dupré recorded this years before in St. Sulpice on LP, which went out of print. So, my recording is the only one available of this entire work on the organ most associated with the composer.
 
In the summer/early fall of 2008 I made two more recordings for JAV within a month of each other, which were released at different times. One is my organ adaptation of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations on Paul Fritts’s stunning magnum opus instrument at St. Joseph’s Cathedral, Columbus, Ohio, and the other a mixed repertoire recording on the Christian Müller organ of St. Bavo, Haarlem, the Netherlands. My first experience with this famous organ was as a student when, at age 20, I spent three weeks at the Haarlem International Organ Academy as the result of a generous scholarship from Illinois College. That experience was life-changing in that it turned my thinking upside down and, consequently, permanently re-directed the way I would conceive performance as it is informed by music history and aesthetics, standards that remain in place to this day. I can’t fully express how thankful I am that this was an experience I had at a young age, when these influences had the chance to be the most powerful.
 
On this side of the pond is the first commercial recording of the Casavant organ Opus 3837 at the Brick Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. This instrument, a cooperative design between director of music Keith Tóth and Jean-Louis Coignet, is a masterpiece. A synthesis between the French symphonic and American orchestral, the organ covers music from Jongen to Tournemire to Hakim to Guilmant, in a warm acoustic environment. There is also my Organ Classics from Saint Patrick Cathedral in New York City—all somewhat lighter fare, some organ solo, some organ plus trumpet, aside from a few heftier pieces by Cook, Vierne, and Widor. It was a great pleasure to have been able to make these two recordings.
 
All of my commercial CD releases from St. Sulpice thus far are on JAV, and all engineered by the outstanding Christoph Frommen, who also owns the Aeolus label in Germany. It was with Frommen, and for Aeolus, that I embarked upon my biggest recording project to date: The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux. I had played much of her music starting as early as my college years, but to document all of her organ solo works on recording was an exciting and challenging prospect. Too many stereotypes were also floating around about this music: that it was a language worth little more than an extension of Dupré’s harmonic idiom, more cerebral than communicative, and not worth the effort. I sought to prove this very wrong. 
 
At the time of the recording, several pieces remained unpublished, and so Chris Frommen and I sought copies of these in manuscript form from Pierre Labric, one of Demessieux’s more famous students, who generously shared the scores with us for this project. These are, specifically, Nativité, Andante, and the Répons (the one for Easter being the only score from the set previously published), now printed by Delatour in France. 
 
We needed an electric-action organ for certain pieces, most importantly the treacherous Six Études, so some of the recording was done on the Stahlhuth/Jann instrument at the Church of St. Martin, Dudelange, Luxembourg, an organ of great color and strength. For the remainder of the release, we chose the great Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. Ouen, Rouen, France, an instrument closely associated with Demessieux’s life. This is such a splendid oeuvre that was too long overlooked. If you don’t know the music, investigate it.
It is with Aeolus that I will release my next recording, the Symphonies 5 and 6 of Louis Vierne. Symphonies 1–4 are now available with Daniel Roth, and my release will complete the set, hopefully later this year. All were recorded again at St. Sulpice.
 
One additional recording must be mentioned, as it appears as a single track on iTunes and is not part of any CD. In September 2010, as a part of one of Michael Barone’s Pipedreams Live! concerts, I played the world premiere of a work I’d commissioned for the occasion from George Baker, Variations on ‘Rouen.’ It is also composed in memory of Jehan Alain, and so there are harmonic and motivic nods in that direction, very much on purpose. That first performance was played at the Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas; my recording of the piece, made as well at St. Sulpice, is what is available on iTunes. There is also a YouTube concert video of my live performance of it at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica in Missouri from the summer of 2013.
 
 
You are also a composer and arranger, creating both transcriptions and original compositions. Are any of these published? Do you have any plans for future works?
 
I have only one published organ work, my Easter Fanfares, composed in 2006 as the result of a commission from Cologne Cathedral in Germany. Two new high-pressure en chamade Tuba ranks had been added to the instrument at the west end of the cathedral, which they wanted to play for the first time at Easter in 2006. My work was composed to be the postlude for that occasion. It is structured, at surface level, like an improvised sortie with the architecture of a written composition, with all melodic and motivic material throughout derived from only two sources: Ite Missa est, Alleluia, the dismissal at the conclusion of the Mass, and the Easter sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes. The piece is dedicated to the Cologne Cathedral organist Winfried Bönig, and is published in a collection of organ music specifically written for the Cologne Cathedral organ called Cologne Fanfares. It is published by Butz Musikverlag of Bonn. There is a JAV YouTube video of me playing the work at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, made a few years ago. 
My only other fairly recent solo organ work was occasion-specific, my Disney’s Trumpets, written for the organ at the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, where I premiered it in concert in March 2011. It is a short, agitato fanfare designed to highlight the various powerful reed stops of this particular instrument, heard both separately by division and, at times, altogether. I kept the unique visual design of the façade in mind. In musical terms, this is reflected in short riffs, which appear rapidly, flinging gestures into many directions at will. And as with the organ’s façade, which appears random to the eye amidst an underlying cohesive structure, so is true in this work, where an overall architecture gives proportion to what seems irregular. As an added layer of tongue-and-cheek, I used as the model for the riffs a motive from a song by David Bowie, of all things. (I don’t remember the name anymore.) I have only played Disney’s Trumpets that one time.
 
I also have an ongoing list of organ transcriptions, which I’m getting to little by little. Those are premiered here and there from time to time; Chopin, Dukas, Stravinsky, Bartók, Mussorgsky, Liszt. I have also toured quite a bit with David Briggs’s colorful transcription of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and two rather demanding organ adaptations by a gifted Italian colleague, Eugenio Fagiani, namely J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Ravel’s La Valse.
 
 
You have received several awards in recent years. Tell us about those.
 
There are two particular awards about which I feel especially honored. One is the 2011 International Performer of the Year award from the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists, the only award of its kind specifically for organists from any professional music guild in the United States. It is a recognition of long-standing accomplishment whose list of recipients is truly global, and I tie with Dame Gillian Weir for the youngest in the award’s history (received, respectively, at the same age in our early 40s). The other is the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Germany’s highest critic’s award for recordings, which I received for The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux release on Aeolus. Imagine some 140 judges looking at an assortment of releases and ripping apart everything from sound quality to performance to graphic design to music notes scholarship. This is the prize. The recipients are chosen under great scrutiny, more so than voted for (and there is a big difference). It is, for me subjectively, the ultimate compliment. Other recipients at that time include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Marc-André Hamelin, and Cecilia Bartoli.
 
 
Beyond your solo career, you have also worked as a church musician. Are you presently doing so?
 
In September 2013 I was offered the position of associate director of music and organist at the Church of Our Saviour (Roman Catholic) in Manhattan by the newly appointed music director and organist, Paul Murray, a long-time friend and colleague in the city with whom I have collaborated on many previous occasions. Ironically, it was in this very church that my wife Lena and I had our son Adrian (born January 5, 2013) baptized. This music program embodies high standards of choral singing—we have an all-professional choir—use of chant, a rich palette of choral and organ repertoire, and no-nonsense liturgical organ improvisation, something I was not doing in New York City since my days at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The mission statement of the church has been beautifully summarized by Mr. Murray as follows:

 
In the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, it was made clear that the Church’s musical heritage, namely chant and polyphony, was to be preserved. At the Church of Our Saviour in New York City, it is my goal to build a liturgical music program that is in concurrence with the admonition of the Second Vatican Council, by developing a professional music program offering music of the highest caliber to the Greater Glory of God.
 
Paul and I have a great rapport as professional colleagues, devoid of the drama that all too often accompanies working relationships. In this regard, I’ve struck gold. The church is also very supportive of my travels. Everything about this position is a match, the kind one hopes to find but rarely does. It is a special centering for me that provides a constant in my artistic life as other things continue in different directions.
 
I must also make mention of post-Easter April 2008, when I was asked to be the official organist for the New York City visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. I was contacted by the current director of music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Jennifer Pascual, who was in charge of music for all events for the Pope’s visit. The organist at the cathedral had been taken ill, and I was asked to cover all televised events from St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Yorkville (in Manhattan), St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and, yes, Yankee Stadium, which took place outdoors. I was struck primarily with how this church leader in his 80s, not some young pop star, captivated these massive gatherings with an energy that was palpable. Music for each of the three occasions was different, involving soloists, choirs, and instrumental ensembles, rehearsals for all of which occurred in under two weeks. It was quite moving to be in the center of the energy that radiated from these huge events. And my days at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the mid-1990s had prepared me for live television, which is always exhilarating.
 
 
What are your thoughts about the future? 
 
Becoming the father of a little boy who is now 1-1/2 years old has become the ultimate filter. My shifts in priorities have been herculean, in a way that a parent understands. I am very sensitive to the passage of time one doesn’t see again, so there is this intolerance for the irrelevant, the counter-productive and the trivial.
 
The most important thing for me to remember is why I have always done what I do, as that unshakably justifies how I must continue. It is critical for me to remember that I was never media-constructed at a young age. In fact, that approach in this country during my 20s, under management, completely failed. I have, however, taken decades to build where I am, and am one who is given the respect on a global platform that I probably sought above all else. It’s an Old School approach to achievement—and it stems from the kind of teaching I had—the kind that leaves you a library of references, not just a membership, and that you don’t accomplish overnight. It must be earned.
 
This all underscores one aspect of my musical life that has become even more pronounced. I consider myself a very serious artist, not an entertainer, one who believes that an audience knows the difference between putting before them a substantial product and just celebrity. If what you speak reaches people profoundly, they remember not only you as the vehicle but the statement, the music itself, and musical memories that matter. You see, this is what will actually save our instrument. Popularity alone is not enough. Actually moving an audience is vital, as this instigates a curiosity for more, which has direct impact on literacy, not merely fascination. It is not possible to produce book after book without addressing the literacy of your readers and then claim you have “saved the book.” There is a big difference between selling an audience tickets and keeping them there. That said, every teacher has to make decisions: one cannot build rockets by continuing to play with blocks. And if nobody curates the collection, what will all of the newly schooled have to hear beyond Concerts 101? 
 
It is no great secret that I have a mostly European career. My own passion for the lineage of such long-rooted, historically aware and layered culture seems to be a marriage with the demand for it from the large (and multi-aged) audiences that continue to want programs of real meat and substance. I feel that I am most inspired engaging an environment wherein, no matter what other globalization invades, the baby isn’t simply discarded with the bathwater. This will continue as my direction for the future, regardless of what else happens. It’s taken me years to evolve to this point, but this article documents part of the journey.
 
 

Stephen Tharp's Discography

 
Naxos Recordings 8.553583
 
Ethereal Recordings 108
 
Ethereal Recordings 104
 
Capstone Records 8679
 
Ethereal Recordings 123
 
 
JAV Recordings 130
 
JAV Recordings 138
 
JAV Recordings 161
 
JAV Recordings 160
 
JAV Recordings 162
 
Aeolus Recordings 10561
 
JAV Recordings 178
 
JAV Recordings 172
 
JAV Recordings 185
 
JAV Recordings 5163
 
 
Christopher Berry (cond.); Stephen Tharp (org.); the Seminary Choir of the Pontifical North American College, Vatican City State
Duruflé Messe “cum Jubilo”; sung chants; organ improvisations
JAV Recordings 181
 
Christopher Hyde (cond.); Camille Haedt-Goussu (cond.); Daniel Roth (Grand Orgue); Stephen Tharp (Orgue du Choeur); Mark Dwyer (Orgue du Choeur); Choeur Darius Milhaud; Ensemble Dodecamen
Widor Mass, Op. 36 plus motets; choir/organ works by Bellenot and Lefébure-Wély; organ improvisations by Daniel Roth
Recorded at St. Sulpice, Paris, France
JAV Recordings 158
 
Richard Proulx (cond.); Stephen Tharp (org.); The Cathedral Singers
Recorded at St. Luke’s Church, Evanston, Illinois
GIA Publications, Chicago
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-926
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.); Edmund Connoly (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-954
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.); Edmund Connoly (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-955

 

Stephen Tharp

STEPHEN THARP

Concert Organist and Recording Artist

"Stephen Tharp is the best organist in America.”
The Diapason
 
"...performed colorfully, rousing and splendid..."
The New York Times
 
“Stephen Tharp had the riskiest billing, closing out the (Boston AGO National) Convention in the only recital before the entire gathering. Tharp responded with the performance of a lifetime [...] the whole thing so dazzlingly executed as to emboss itself upon the memory.”
Choir & Organ Magazine
 
 
Stephen Tharp, hailed as “the organist for the connoisseur” (organ - Journal für die Orgel, Germany), “the thinking person’s performer” (Het Orgel), “every bit the equal of any organist” (The American Organist" magazine) and “the consummate creative artist” (Michael Barone, Pipedreams), is recognized as one of the great concert organists of our age. 
Having played more than 1400 concerts across 45 tours worldwide, Stephen Tharp has built one of the most well-respected international careers in the world, earning him the reputation as the most traveled concert organist of his generation. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World, and has been given the 2011 International Performer of the Year Award by the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
 
His list of performances since 1987 includes such distinguished venues as St. Bavo, Haarlem; St. Eustache, Paris; Ste. Croix, Bordeaux; The Hong Kong Cultural Centre; the Town Halls of Sydney and Adelaide, Australia; Tchaikovsky Hall, Moscow; the Tonhalle, Zürich; the Duomo, Milano, Italy; the cathedrals in Berlin, Köln, München, Münster and Passau, and the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, Germany; the Frauenkirche, Dresden; Igreja da Lapa, Porto; Antwerp Cathedral, Belgium; Dvorak Hall, Prague; the Hallgrimskirkja, Reykjavik, Iceland; The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; The Kimmel Center, Philadelphia; The Riverside Church, New York City; Rice University, Houston; Spivey Hall, Atlanta; and Severance Hall, Cleveland.
 
He has given master classes at Yale University; Westminster Choir College; the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bethel University (St. Paul, MN); the Hochschulen für Musik in Stuttgart, Trossingen and Bochum (Germany); and for chapters of the American Guild of Organists. He has also adjudicated for competitions at the Juilliard School and Northwestern University.
 
Stephen Tharp remains an important champion of new organ music, and continues to commission and premiere numerous compositions for the instrument. The first such piece was Jean Guillou’s symphonic poem Instants, Op. 57, which Tharp premiered at King’s College, Cambridge, England in February 1998. Works dedicated to him include George Baker’s Variations on “Rouen” (2009); David Briggs’ Toccata Labyrinth (2006); Samuel Adler’s Sonata (2005); Eugenio Fagiani’s Psalm 100 (2009) and Stèle (2003); Thierry Escaich’s Trois Poèmes (2002); Philip Moore’s Sinfonietta (2001); Anthony Newman’s Tombeau d'Igor Stravinsky (2000), Toccata and Fuga Sinfonica on BACH (1999) and the Second Symphony (1992); Martha Sullivan's Slingshot Shivaree for Organ and Percussion (1999); and Morgan Simmons Exercitatio Fantastica (1997). Himself a composer, Tharp was commissioned by Cologne Cathedral, Germany to compose for Easter Sunday, 2006 his Easter Fanfares for the inauguration of the organ’s new en chamade Tuba stops, as well Disney’s Trumpets, composed in February 2011 for the organ at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, where it was premiered by the composer the following month.
 
In April 2008, Stephen Tharp was named the Official Organist for the NY visit of Pope Benedict XVI, playing for three major events attended by more than 60,000 people that were broadcast live worldwide. Mr. Tharp’s playing has also been heard on both English and Irish national television, on Radio Prague, orgelnieuws.nl in the Netherlands, and in the U. S. on American Public Media’s Pipedreams. In both 2005 and 2011, Pipedreams broadcast entire programmes dedicated exclusively to his career, making him one of the few organists in the world so honoured. 
 
He is also an active chamber musician nationwide, having performed on organ, piano and harpsichord with artists such as Thomas Hampson, Itzhak Perlman, Jennifer Larmore, Rachel Barton Pine, the American Boychoir (James Litton, conductor), the St. Thomas Choir (John Scott, conductor, in Duruflé’s Requiem), and at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. His 14 solo organ recordings can be found on the JAV, Aeolus, Naxos, Organum and Ethereal labels, and are available from the Organ Historical Society (http://www.ohscatalog.org/), JAV Recordings (http://www.pipeorgancds.com/) and Aeolus (http://www.aeolus-music.com/). 
 
His commercial release The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux on Aeolus Recordings, received the 2009 Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Germany’s premier critic’s prize for recordings, as well as the French 5 Diapason award. The release was celebrated in October 2010 with Mr. Tharp’s performance of the complete Demessieux works live over three concerts at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Stephen Tharp plays St. Bavo, Haarlem, The Netherlands on the JAV label was called “the most beautiful CD of 2009” by Resmusica in France.
 
Stephen Tharp earned his BA degree, magna cum laude, from Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL and his MM from Northwestern University, Chicago, where he studied with Rudolf Zuiderveld and Wolfgang Rübsam, respectively. He has also worked privately with Jean Guillou in Paris.
 
For more information, see www.stephentharp.com.

Globe Trotter: A conversation with Thomas Trotter

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of The Diapason.

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Not too many of today’s organists have a listing in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. One who does is Thomas Trotter, who has made his mark with a dazzling, effortless technique and compelling interpretations. In 2001 the Royal Philharmonic Society presented their Instrumentalist Award to Trotter, citing him as “one of the foremost exponents of the organist’s art” who “makes the organ one of the most warmly romantic of instruments. His technical and musical accomplishments have played a significant role in raising the profile of the organ, an instrument at the heart of British music-making.” Trotter was the first (and so far, only) organist to win this award.
Trotter has a busy schedule, underpinned by his position as City Organist in Birmingham, England; he is now also Artistic Adviser and Resident Organist of the Klais organ at Symphony Hall there, where he gave the opening recital in October 2001. He also serves as organist at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey, along with teaching, and performing concerts in Europe and the U.S. Trotter presents upwards of 50 concerts a year (about half of those, in Birmingham). He has performed with many orchestras, including the Vienna, Berlin, London, and Royal Philharmonics, and the San Francisco Symphony. His appearances at major festivals include Salzburg, Vienna, and Edinburgh; he has performed on major instruments, including at Woolsey Hall at Yale (where he recently served as visiting artist-in-residence), St. Ouen in Rouen, France, St. Bavo in Haarlem, Netherlands, Weingarten Abbey in Germany, and the Klais organ at the new Esplanade Concert Hall in Singapore.
Trotter’s performances, both live and recorded, have received critical acclaim. A review of his most recent CD, Sounds Phenomenal, praises the “mastery of musical pace and flow” and “beautifully sensitive playing in the lovely Schumann canons.”1 Trotter played the dedicatory recital on the Klais organ at Overture Hall in Madison, Wisconsin; a reviewer commented on his “impeccable articulation” and “deft foot work.”2 The playing in Trotter’s recording of (his own) arrangement of Mozart’s two Fantasies in f minor (K. 594, K. 608) was praised for its “technical brilliance and conservative, yet satisfying schemes of registration.”3
The most recent addition to his discography, which numbers over 20 recordings, is Sounds Phenomenal, recorded on the 4-manual Klais instrument in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall. He is represented in the U.S. by Karen McFarlane Artists.
We spoke with Thomas Trotter by phone in March.

JR: It’s lovely to talk to you, and thank you so much for agreeing to do this. Are you in Birmingham right now, or are you in London?
TT: I’m actually in Windsor where I live.

JR: Are you near the castle?
TT: Yes, quite near, about five minutes’ walk.

JR: You were an organ scholar there, yes? At St. George’s Chapel?
TT: Yes, for a year before I went up to Cambridge, while I was still at the Royal College of Music. Until then I had no experience of church music, so it was a great preparation for life as a Cambridge organ scholar.

JR: How did you become interested in the organ?
TT: I had always wanted to play the piano and started having lessons at the age of five. My piano teacher at my secondary school was also the organist there, and when I was 11 he introduced me to the organ. From then on I became much more enthusiastic about the organ than the piano, but I continued to study the piano seriously until I left the Royal College of Music. So it was via the piano that I came to the organ.

JR: Did you continue your piano studies because you felt that you needed that as a foundation, or was it continued interest in the piano?
TT: Both! I wanted to play the piano repertoire, and anyway when I was eleven I was barely tall enough to reach the pedals. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to play the organ properly for another few years, so in the meantime it was prudent to continue at the piano. It was also much easier to find a piano to practice on than an organ—we had one at home for a start!

JR: There is a new organ method approach, in which one doesn’t need to start with piano; students go directly to playing the organ.
TT: I’m sure it’s possible to play the organ without having played the piano, but there is much to be gained from playing more than one keyboard instrument. Bach himself advocated the clavichord for developing a sensitive touch. A sensitive touch and a good ear are crucial on the piano, and that can surely only benefit organ playing too. A good piano technique is also very helpful when it comes to playing the Romantic and contemporary organ repertoire.

JR: Describe organist training in England. What does the college curriculum comprise?
TT: There are two main options for organ study in Great Britain. One is the music college (for example, the Royal College or Royal Academy of Music in London or the Royal Northern in Manchester) and the other is university, with both kinds of institutions offering courses at degree level. The courses have a more practical bias at the music colleges, but often the performing opportunities can be greater at the universities where music students are in the minority. The “apprentice” system exists in both music colleges and universities (at least those with links to cathedrals), but it is most strongly associated with the Oxbridge colleges, where an organ scholar will act as assistant to the director of music (or be the director if there isn’t one!). This is an extremely effective and comprehensive training, particularly useful for those wishing to pursue a church music career.

JR: Which track did you follow? Did you have aspirations for a cathedral post or were you more interested in concertizing?
TT: I was always more interested in concertizing, so I first studied at the Royal College of Music, London with Ralph Downes, who is best remembered today as the designer of the Royal Festival Hall organ. I never planned to pursue the Oxbridge “apprentice” path and had little interest in church music, but the idea was put into my head by the then director, Sir David Willcocks, who pointed out that an Oxbridge organ scholarship would be a good springboard for any performing career. So a year later I applied for and won the organ scholarship to King’s College Cambridge, where I read for a degree in music and acted as assistant organist to the director of music Philip Ledger. At this time I studied with Dame Gillian Weir, who was a marvelous teacher and a great inspiration to me. After leaving Cambridge I moved to London, where I embarked on a freelance career which included playing harpsichord and organ continuo, accompanying on the piano, some church work, and most importantly giving solo recitals. I had just won the St. Albans International Organ Competition, which resulted in a number of recital invitations. I also continued my studies with Marie-Claire Alain, traveling over to Paris once a month for lessons. Her scholarly approach made me look at the music from a different perspective, and I played French Classical and Romantic instruments for the first time. My big professional break came when I was appointed Birmingham City Organist in 1983.

JR: Let’s talk a little about Birmingham. You are the City Organist there, and also the Resident Organist at Symphony Hall. Are those two actual different roles?
TT: No, since my residency at Symphony Hall is an extension of what I was already doing at the Town Hall. As city organist I present a regular series of concerts at the Town Hall, and, since the arrival of the new Klais in 2001, at Symphony Hall also. In theory, you could have a different organist playing at each venue, but the musical scene in Birmingham is not big enough to support two resident organists. There have only been five city organists since 1842, and they have mostly served for between 30 and 50 years. I’m in my twenty-third year now and I’m planning to be around for a good few more years!

JR: It seems that there are many more town hall organist positions in the U.K. than we have in the U.S.
TT: Well, the whole tradition was born in this country, so it’s not surprising that there are more positions here. The English are by nature very conservative, and they jealously guard their traditions. Another reason might be the system of public funding. All of these town hall positions are funded by local councils, whereas in America the arts rely much more on sponsorship by wealthy individuals. The thing about public funding is that it’s available in good times as well as bad, whereas private sponsorship can be more precarious. There have been regular organ recitals at Birmingham Town Hall since 1842, and the commitment from the City Council is as strong as ever.

JR: How’s the attendance these days? Has it changed at all?
TT: We’re in an interim period at the moment, because in 1996 the Town Hall closed for a huge renovation project, and for the last nine years the concerts have been presented at the nearby St. Philip’s Cathedral. Before the hall closed, the regular attendance was 400 or 500 people, whereas at St. Philip’s the attendance is half that number. At Symphony Hall, the attendance is usually around 400, but some of the events—the Christmas carol concerts for example—can attract up to 2000 people.

JR: Do a lot of young people come to the concerts?
TT: Nearly all of the concerts take place at lunchtime, and so our audience consists mainly of retired people. We’d like to attract more young people, but generally the younger people are preoccupied with earning a living, and the really young people are at school! A couple of years ago at Symphony Hall we had a very successful event aimed at children, but this was a one-off event, and the regular support comes mostly from the older generation.

JR: Your commitments include Birmingham, serving as organist at St. Margaret’s Westminster, teaching, and concertizing, often in other countries. Do you have flexibility built into your commitments so that you are able to travel?
TT: Absolutely, yes, because traveling around playing concerts is my main source of income. The Birmingham position provides me with a very solid base, and I receive other playing invitations as a result of being there. At St. Margaret’s Westminster I am responsible only for the organ playing, so my commitments are not great, and with the help of deputies I have complete flexibility. For the last three years I’ve been teaching several of the organ scholars at Cambridge, which involves two or three visits per term, so not a huge commitment there either. My priorities are the recital series in Birmingham and my recitals elsewhere, and everything else comes after that.

JR: What level are your students? Are they concertizing already?
TT: Yes. They all play in public to a professional standard, and the King’s scholars especially are used to working under pressure whether it be in chapel, concert hall or recording studio. Nearly all of them will be professional musicians when they leave university. Sometimes they learn things rather too quickly than they ought to because they’re very good sight readers, which is an essential quality for an organ scholar. But they’re very clever, and smart, and talented, so I feel lucky to be teaching them.

JR: Do you have enough time to practice? How do you fit that in?
TT: Well, the older I get, the less practice I seem to do, which is a dangerous thing to say. But I think I use the time more efficiently. My organ at home has a very revealing touch, and two hours practice on that is equivalent to four hours on a lesser instrument. I rarely practice for more than three hours a day, but rarely less than two either. Sometimes practice means preparing the registration for a concert at a venue, sometimes it’s learning a new piece or revising an old one, sometimes it’s just keeping your technique up to scratch—a bit like an athlete keeping fit!

JR: You seem to play mostly larger instruments—huge instruments!
TT: That’s true, certainly in America and Britain. And obviously, if you’re playing on a large organ, then you’ve got to cut your cloth accordingly and play the big pieces—which I enjoy. But I also play a lot of smaller instruments, especially in the Netherlands and Germany, where there are many beautiful historic organs.

JR: Smaller instruments can be limiting for a lot of repertoire.
TT: Yes, but it’s not a problem if the instruments are well designed. This June I will play a concert in the Handel Haus in Halle on a one-manual organ with rudimentary pedals, built in 1770. At first I was rather daunted at the prospect, but after some thought it wasn’t so difficult to put together a program. I’ll play a Bach partita, some Elizabethan music, some of the smaller Mozart pieces, and a pared-down arrangement of one of the Handel organ concertos.

JR: I associate you with the larger—I’ll say “swashbuckling”—kind of pieces, with orchestra.
TT: I’m certainly better known for playing that repertoire, but I’ve always wanted to explore other areas of the repertoire. And it’s true I do quite a lot of concerto work, which started with Simon Rattle in Birmingham. I enjoy it, but not more than playing solo. There are so many technical difficulties associated with playing concertos—making sure the balance is right, coping with acoustical delays, watching the conductor and making sure the ensemble is good—these difficulties don’t exist when you are playing solo. You can always tell more about an organist in a solo context!

JR: Yes—it’s nice just to have your own canoe to paddle!
TT: Exactly! In the last few weeks I’ve been working on a new concerto for wind band and organ by Piet Kee, who was the former city organist in Haarlem in the Netherlands. The concert will be at the Concertgebouw, which has a Cavaillé-Coll organ recently restored by Flentrop. He sent me a computer-generated recording of the piece, which is quite comical in places, really. But it’s helped to give me an overview of the piece and how the organ fits in with the orchestra.

JR: You’ve recorded in the Netherlands.
TT: Yes, that’s right! I did a Mozart disc on a beautiful 2-manual instrument in Farmsum, which is a little town in North Holland. We were there in the depth of winter where the average temperature was one degree centigrade—and that was inside the church! The organ is by Lohmann and dates from the 1830s, but stylistically it’s very much within the 18th-century tradition. It has these wonderful sweet-sounding flutes that you often hear on a fairground organ—you know, a calliope, or whatever you call it in America. I love that sound—that pure sound; it was perfect for Mozart. I’ve also recorded music by Jehan Alain on a very large 4-manual instrument by Van den Heuvel in Katwijk, further down the coast of Holland.

JR: Most of your recordings were made on organs either outside the U.K., or if they’re in the U.K.—let’s say “Father” Willis doesn’t stand out in your discography! Is that just by chance?
TT: When I was in my twenties I just loved anything that was French. Then I started getting into the German Romantics and early music. And then about eight years ago I realized that I had neglected English music, which audiences, particularly in Europe, expect English organists to play. So recently I’ve tried to redress the balance, and instruments permitting I always include British music in my programs. The Elgar Sonata is of course wonderful, there are great pieces by Parry, Stanford, Bridge, Howells, Bairstow, and some exciting new music by Judith Bingham, James MacMillan, Michael Nyman, and others. But my recent recordings have been on the Symphony Hall Klais, for which traditional British repertoire is not an obvious choice. But it’s my intention to record English music in the future, and “Father” Willis might come into the picture at that point. Authentic “Father” Willis organs can be quite intractable though—they sort of clatter a bit, and the devices for changing the stops can be primitive to say the least—they certainly present their own problems!

JR: For a long time England was seen as provincial or parochial in its organ building. This seems to be changing. Are mechanical action and a more classical orientation the norm?
TT: The organ reform movement, which has been so important in shaping organ design in the last 80 or so years, hit these shores rather later and with less force than in the rest of Europe. But today the work of British organbuilders is highly respected at home and abroad, with many new organs now being built for export. For the majority of builders I would say that mechanical action is the preferred choice, but bearing in mind the architecture of British churches and the necessity of placing organs near choirs, this option can be impractical. Certainly the best electric actions I’ve ever come across are found in Britain.

JR: You’ve played on numerous Klais instruments. Were you responsible for bringing Klais to Birmingham? Was that mostly your decision as the organ consultant?
TT: The Symphony Hall organ project first came up in 1989 as the hall was under construction. Because of lack of funds it was decided to commission the organ in two stages, the first of which was to design and install the case façade. Klais won the contract on the strength of their innovative design, and the case was installed in time for the opening of the Hall in 1991. The rest of the money was raised some five years later, which enabled Klais to complete the organ in 2001. In the intervening years the original concept changed, and I think we have a better organ now than we would have had the organ been completed in 1991. I’ve opened several other new Klais instruments—the one in Madison, the one at the Esplanade Hall in Singapore; in Moscow, at the House of Music, where Klais collaborated with Glätter-Gotz.

JR: Did you take very much heat for working with Klais in Birmingham rather than championing a British builder? Was that an issue?
TT: Well, we already had that issue at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in 1997 where the organ was built by the Danish builder Marcussen. I was the consultant and very much in the firing line for that. But as a consultant you have to go with what you think is the best scheme regardless of nationality, and of course the larger English builders do regularly export their instruments abroad.

JR: Are there special considerations when designing a town hall organ other than the obvious things—that this is a large hall, and the organ might have to work with an orchestra as well as performing as a solo instrument?
TT: Well, that is precisely the most important factor determining its design. A town hall or concert hall organ needs very loud stops to match the power of an orchestra and many 8¢ stops, which will assist with blend. It also needs to have many pedal stops, including 32¢ registers, because those pitches are lower than what any orchestral instrument can provide. Concert hall organs need a degree of eclecticism in order to cope with many styles of music played by organists from widely different traditions. But of course there are far more similarities than there are differences between a town hall and a church organ.

JR: Playing transcriptions seems to be an interest of yours. What do you think about them being back out there after being out of vogue for so long?
TT: Well, it’s great that we are allowed to enjoy ourselves again! I first became interested in transcriptions at King’s, where I always enjoyed the challenge of recreating the sound of the orchestra in pieces like the Fauré Requiem or the Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs. But my real chance, my excuse for playing solo transcriptions, came in 1983 when I was appointed Birmingham City Organist, as I knew that this tradition had always been associated with such positions. The first one I learned was Wagner’s Meistersinger overture, which I played at my first concert, and from then on I was hooked. I usually include perhaps one or two transcriptions in most of the programs I play, and sponsors often ask for them. I’m not so keen on playing whole programs of them, and I’ve noticed that there are a few organists who are doing that now. The legitimate repertoire should always take pride of place, and there is some wonderful real organ music that should not be ignored at the expense of transcriptions.

JR: Well, I don’t think you could ever be accused of tilting the balance too far. But I’ve enjoyed the transcriptions I’ve heard you play, and it’s nice to just lighten the mood a little bit.
TT: Exactly! And it’s fun to hear music in a different medium than the one for which it was originally conceived. And you read reports of Edwin Lemare’s playing, and apparently he used to bring out details that you wouldn’t have heard in the orchestral version. Sometimes music can take on a different kind of life—you can hear things that you can’t hear in the original.

JR: I’ve really enjoyed your recordings, especially things like the Naji Hakim homage to Stravinsky and your recording of Rubrics.
TT: Rubrics is such an effective piece—it has the perfect number of movements, none of them lasting too long, each of them exploiting a different color of the instrument, and I so enjoy playing it. I love discovering pieces like that, that are modern and different, but at the same time are accessible. That’s the other thing I’ve taken to doing in recent times—always playing a piece by a living composer.

JR: You’ve made some arrangements of pieces—Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, the Mozart Fantasies, for instance. Did you enjoy doing those, and do you plan to do any more?
TT: It was fun, but writing out arrangements is very time-consuming. The Mozart pieces were not such a problem because I had already performed the music many times, and my arrangements don’t differ that much from the original four-stave versions that are currently available. Recently I did my own arrangement of three movements from Stravinsky’s Petroushka, which was challenging and certainly challenging to play. But it did help me to while away many hours in dreary hotel rooms.

JR: Do you have any projects planned for the immediate future, particularly recordings? Anything new coming up?
TT: I did a recording of English choral classics with the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus in January for EMI, which will be released in the near future. I’m certainly planning to do more recording at Symphony Hall and the Town Hall when it comes back on stream in 2007—the time of the reopening is October 2007. So there’ll definitely be more recordings from there, but hopefully from other places as well. I’ve not been a prolific recording artist compared to some of my colleagues, but I make up for it with the number of concerts I do—maybe 50–60 every year. Recording—I’m never satisfied with the results! You know, no matter how carefully I prepare, I always want to do it differently three months later!

JR: What are some of your future plans and goals?
TT: I don’t really have any long-term plans other than wanting to improve as a player and continuing to broaden my horizons. Discovering and learning new music gives me the greatest satisfaction, and if I still enjoy playing 15 years from now I will be happy!

JR: Well, Thomas, thank you so much for your time.
TT: Not at all. A pleasure.

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