The Campbell Organ Festival will present a concert Wednesday evening featuring English organist Stephen Cleobury, the music director at King’s College. You may recognize his playing from UPR’s annual Christmas Eve broadcast of the “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” live from Cambridge, England.
He is in Logan this week and will be performing as well as conducting two Utah State University choirs at Wednesday’s concert. He’ll be playing on the recently renovated Holtkamp organ located in the Kent Concert Hall.
I spoke with Cleobury about how fun it must be to get creative with each unique organ he performs on.
“That is something that I really enjoy about meeting a new instrument, is you come with a sound of a piece in your mind and you think, ‘How can I recreate this on this organ,'" Cleobury said. "Sometimes the organ tells you things like, ‘No, you can’t do that with me, you’ve got to do that another way.’ You have to spend time getting to know the instrument and find out how it best speaks.”
Audience members will hear him play solo works by composers such as Elgar, Couperin and, of course, some J.S. Bach.
“It’s an interesting thing going around playing different organs, I usually find within 5 or 10 minutes I know I’m going to make friends with the instrument or not. That was wonderful coming here to find that I’m getting on so well with the instrument, because then we’re working together,” Cleobury said.
For more details about the concert, visit the Caine College's website.