Internationally-acclaimed English organist Philip Scriven will perform a concert at University of the Ozarks on Tuesday, April 9, in Munger Memorial Chapel.
English organist Philip Scriven will perform a concert in Munger Chapel at 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 9.
The concert, which will begin at 7 p.m., is free and open to the public.
Scriven is the Organist-in-Residence at Cranleigh School, located just outside of London. He is also the principal conductor of the Darwin Ensemble Chamber Orchestra, and is the assistant conductor and accompanist of the Bach Choir. He combines these posts with a freelance recital career, which takes him around the world. He is widely regarded as one of the finest organists of his generation, and highly respected as a choral, orchestral and operatic conductor.
Scriven’s 70-minute concert at Ozarks is expected to include Herbert Brewer’s Marche Héroique, J.S. Bach’s Allegro, Tchaikovsky’s Finale, Louis Vierne’s Berceuse, and Josef Rheinberger’s Cantilena. Scriven will play on Munger Chapel’s Great Hosanna Reuter Organ, which has more than 2,000 pipes and was installed in 1991.
Born in Somerset in 1970, Scriven received his early musical training as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, and a music scholar at Charterhouse. He went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music, Cambridge University, the Vienna Musikhochschule and the Juilliard School in New York. As an organist, he has held positions at St. George’s Windsor, St. John’s College Cambridge, Westminster Abbey, Winchester Cathedral and Lichfield Cathedral, where he was director of music from 2002-2010.
His talent as a performer and an accompanist has been recognized by numerous awards at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Organists, most notably as the RCO "Performer of the Year" in 1995. He has performed in many of the major cathedrals and concert halls throughout the United Kingdom, and regular foreign tours have taken him to France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. He is one of the few organists to have performed as a soloist in Carnegie Hall. In addition to his work at Cranleigh, he teaches privately, was for many years the organ tutor at the Charterhouse Summer School of Music, and is currently Adjunct Professor of Organ and Conducting at the Hong Kong Institute of Music Plus.
Scriven has twice performed the complete organ works of J.S. Bach, and has transcribed a number of works by Brahms, Warlock and Bernstein for the instrument. He has made a number of solo CDs, each of which has been received with wide critical acclaim. His CD "Piping Hot" was praised in The Gramophone for "the outstanding quality of his playing…good-humored and sparkling…a joy to listen to." Recent recordings include CDs of jazz-inspired music for organ, the inaugural recording of the new organ at Lyme Regis, and a transcription of Holst’s "The Planets."
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