GILLIAN WEIR

Biography

British organist Gillian Weir is one of the musical world’s foremost artists. Through her unique career as an internationally-acclaimed concert organist, performing world-wide at the major festivals and with leading orchestras and conductors, Dame Gillian is famous as a distinguished musician known for her artistry, virtuosity and integrity, her reputation extending well beyond the world of the organ.

Her renown as a performer, which has stimulated numerous young players to follow her, is backed by her scholarly reputation; she is in demand as an adjudicator for all the leading international competitions and as a lecturer, broadcaster, teacher and writer, while her television appearances have reached vast new audiences. She is a Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore Maryland, and is Prince Consort Professor of Organ at London’s Royal College of Music.

Gillian Weir’s concert repertoire is exceptional in its breadth and variety, stretching from the Renaissance to the contemporary. She has performed the complete works of Bach as well as those of Messiaen and others, and her pre-eminent position as Messiaen interpreter has been underlined with the release of his complete organ works on compact disc. This has been universally received with unprecedented praise, and such plaudits as Le Monde’s (Paris) “This intégrale is a worthy successor to that by Messiaen himself” and with Yvonne Loriod Messiaen’s “C’est magnifique!” As an international authority on his music she has also made major contributions to Faber’s The Messiaen Companion and other publications. She has received a host of prizes, awards and honors, and in 1996 was created Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in recognition of her distinguished services to music, after having been made CBE in 1989.

Gillian Weir’s achievements have been marked by the re-issue on compact disc of her legendary series of Argo recordings, and by her nomination by Classic CD magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Keyboard Players of the Century, as well as by the Sunday Times as one of the 1000 Music Makers of the Millennium. In December 2000, Britain’s famed South Bank Show (on the ITV network) chronicled her worldwide activities as performer, teacher and recording artist in a fascinating documentary, the only time an organist has been so honored.

Recent appearances have been in Singapore’s superb new concert hall, Moscow’s new House of Music, and in the great cathedrals of Europe and the concert halls of its capital cities. She gave the first solo recital to have been held in London’s Royal Albert Hall for some fifty years to an audience of over 2000, following the organ’s $3 million refurbishment, and a spectacular recital to a sold-out Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. She will spend some time as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of East Carolina from January to March. In April she will star at the re-opening of the Mormon Tabernacle and in June at Providence Rhode Island at the AGO Regional Convention, before returning to Europe for festivals in Italy and Britain as well as to take her place on the juries of international competitions in France, Germany and the Czech Republic.

More new recordings from famous concert halls are planned to follow Gillian Weir’s landmark recording from the Royal Albert Hall, the first on the rebuilt organ, and her recent CD documenting the organ of the Royal Festival Hall, made just before the organ was removed for major refurbishment. The latest release in this series, “Gillian Weir On Stage,” comes from Symphony Hall in Birmingham. Her 2-cd set of Bach’s great Clavier-Übung was acclaimed by the Gramophone, the BBC Music Magazine, Classic FM Magazine, and the International Record Review. Her further 2-cd set of Bach’s “The Eighteen Chorales” and other major works was recorded on the new Bach organ in the master’s own church of St. Thomas in Leipzig, and the final 2-cd set in her re-released series of the organ works of Messiaen has again been acclaimed as “definitive” and “the first choice” among those available. Containing the three works published after Messiaen’s death it is one of only two sets worldwide to be complete. Her Priory series will continue with recordings on many of the world’s most famous organs, adding to the series of which the BBC Music Magazine wrote “The more I hear of this series, the more I feel them to be a priceless store of treasures, bearing witness to one of the world’s finest players.”

For more information about Dame Gillian, please visit her website: gillianweir.com