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The English organist, Kevin Bowyer, studied with Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, David Sanger, Virginia Black and Paul Steinitz. He has won first prizes in five international organ competitions.
Kevin Bowyer has gained a reputation for playing unusual and new music and for taking on “impossible” projects. In 1987 he gave the world premiere of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji’s two hour solo Symphony for Organ, considered “impossible” ever since its publication in 1925. Other UK premieres have included works by Brian Ferneyhough (Sieben Sterne), Anthony Gilbert (Halifenu Vine Dance), Charles Wuorinen (Natural Fantasy) and Iannis Xenakis (Gmeeoorh). K.S. Sorabji’s massive Second Organ Symphony (1929-32, about 6½ hours) is scheduled for performance in 2007.
At home Kevin Bowyer has played solo and concerto concerts in most of the major venues and festivals. Trips and tours abroad have taken him throughout Europe, North America, Australia and Japan. In summer 2003 he played the complete solo organ Symphonies of Widor and Vierne and the complete organ works of Olivier Messiaen in three concerts in the same week, 16 hours of music, at St. Giles, Cripplegate.
Kevin Bowyer has released a great number of solo CD's, many of which have won awards. These include many landmark recordings of contemporary music as well as the complete organ music of J.S. Bach and music by Charles-Valentin Alkan, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Reubke, Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, Messiaen, Alain, etc. Jonathan Wearn, writing in MusicWeb International, described him as “one of the world’s hardiest and most formidable virtuosos… probably Britain’s most formidable organist…” and Gramophone magazine described him as “unique”.
Kevin Bowyer is a popular teacher, working for the St. Giles International Organ School and at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Kevin has lectured and given master-classes in many countries and appears regularly on the staff of the Oundle Summer School for Young Organists. He is Organist to the University of Glasgow and runs an extensive recital series there which includes many new commissions. In this capacity he will be premiereing works by Michael Finnissy, Edward Gregson, Chris Dench, Arthur Butterworth, Iain Matheson and Alan Gibbs in 2007. Performances of works by Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, Charles Camilleri, Ian Shaw, Paul Ayres, Haflidi Hallgrímsson, Claude Loyola Allgén and Jan Vriend were planned for 2007-2008 season.
His article, “Twentieth Century European Organ Music - A Toast”, cast as a play set in a Cotswolds pub, in the Incorporated Association of Organists’ Millennium Book was described by one reviewer as “quite simply the best piece of writing on organ music that I have ever seen.”
Kevin Bowyer's other interests include reading widely, obscure cinema, real ale, malt whiskies and looking at the sea. His favourite pastime is sleeping. |
