Stephen Tharp

April 21, 2014 by Improviser

Official Website:
http://www.stephentharp.com/

Having played more than 1400 concerts across 43 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 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) and David Briggs’ Toccata Labyrinth (2006).

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.

Video:
Improvisation – St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York

Literary texts

April 18, 2014 by Improviser

Passages from works of literature also can provide inspiration for spontaneous musical composition. As the traditional home of the organ has been the church, passages from the Bible are probably the most frequent literary texts chosen as themes for improvisations. For example, the Stations of the Cross provided not just a theme for the composition of Marcel Dupré, but many other organists have chosen to improvise music for the same or very similar sets of readings.

Videos:
Thierry Escaich Improv sur le “Chemin de la Croix” de Claudel – Notre Dame de Paris
Thierry Escaich- Improvisation on a text from Saint Paul

Frédéric Blanc

April 17, 2014 by Improviser

Frédéric Blanc was assistant organist at Saint-Sernin de Toulouse (1987-1995). A finalist of the International Improvisation Competition of Strasbourg in 1989, he has also been a prize winner of several other International Improvisations competitions, including Nuremberg (1996) and 2nd Prize in the Grand Prize of Chartres. In 1997, he was awarded the Grand Prize of the city of Paris, an international competition. Frédéric Blanc maintains an active career as a concert artist throughout Europe, as well as making several concert tours in the USA. He has recorded several CD for EMI, Aeolus, Motette devoted to improvisation and organ literature. Since 1999, Frédéric Blanc has served as organist at Notre Dame d’Auteuil, Paris.

Recordings:

Blanc: Live Improvisations

Blanc: Live improvisations

Organ Improvisations on Bach Toccata & Fugue in D Minor
This recording features many performers, including Lionel Rogg, Barbara Dennetlein, Frederic Blanc, Holm Vogel, Johannes Mayr, Vincent Thevenaz, and David Franke.

The OHS Catalog lists a DVD of Frederic Blanc offering improvisation instruction here.

Videos:
Free improvisation – Notre Dame d’Auteuil, Paris
Frédéric Blanc, François-Henri Houbart and Olivier Latry improvise

Richard Grayson

April 11, 2014 by Improviser

Richard Grayson
Website:
http://faculty.oxy.edu/rgrayson/

Professor of Music, Emeritus, Occidental College
Music Faculty, Crossroads School
Richard Grayson (born 1941) is an American composer and pianist. He is best known as an improvisor of classical music, most often with live-electronics. By the 1980s, he was regarded as one of the best non-jazz improvisers (Shulgold 1985). He was also organist at St. Martin of Tours Church, West Los Angeles until his retirement on May 31, 2009, after having served in that position for 28 years.

He offers an improvisation handbook for free download on his website here.

YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/improvelectronic/videos
While not improvisations at the organ, the collection of videos present wonderful demonstrations of different composer’s styles and how themes from one era can be treated in the style of a completely different composer.
Examples include:
“Singin’ in the Rain” in the style of Wagner
“Singin’ in the Rain” in the style of a Chopin Waltz
Moonlight Sonata in the Style of Khachaturian
Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” in the style of Mozart
Can Can in the style of Stravinsky
And this is only a sample!!!

Otto Maria Krämer

April 11, 2014 by Improviser

Website:
http://www.orgelimprovisationen.de

Otto Maria Krämer studied at the Folkwang Hochschule, Essen and at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf. His teacher was Wolfgang Seifen. In 1995 he won the first prize of the Concours d’Improvisation a l’orgue Montbrison. He teaches now in the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne.

Recordings:

Otto Maria Kramer: Improvisations

Videos:
Suite Francaise – Plein jeu
Suite Francaise – Fugue
Suite Francaise – Récit
Suite Francaise – Basse de trompette
Suite Francaise – Quatuor
Suite Francaise – Duo
Suite Francaise – Tierce en taille
Suite Francaise – Dialogue sur les grands jeux
Symphonie Francaise – Allegro ma non troppo
Symphonie Francaise – Cantabile
Symphonie Francaise – Scherzando on “Macht hoch die Tür”
Symphonie Francaise – Prière
Symphonie Francaise – Final
Improvisation in Memoriam Marcel Dupré on “Ave maris stella”

Michele Johns

April 3, 2014 by Improviser

Michele Johns is professor of music at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, & Dance, where she has taught church music skills and philosophy for over twenty years. She is the author of Hymn Improvisation (Augsburg 1987) which has received critical acclaim in professional journals and continues to enjoy popularity with organ students in universities, as well as those at other levels of experience.

Free Themes

April 2, 2014 by Improviser

For our purposes here, free themes will be considered musical material written by someone else that is not associated with any lyrics. It may be a theme from another musical composition or newly written material.
For example:

Other examples from improvisation competitions are shown below.

See also the themes from the 1953 Haarlem Improvisation Competition. There are also links to hear the performance of each of the competitors.

Twelve-Tone Set

April 1, 2014 by Improviser

Arnold Schoenberg pioneered the technique of using each of the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale in a serial order often called a tone row or set. This gives each pitch more or less equal importance and eliminates any sense of key center. The method was used in the early twentieth century by the composers of the Second Viennese School — Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Hanns Eisler and Schoenberg himself.

While the technique can be applied very strictly in written compositions, a freer application of twelve-tone technique making use of partial sets, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde-inversion techniques have been used by many composers and can be applied in improvisation.

Videos:
Ann Labounsky – Improvisation on a 12 Tone Series

Franz Lehrndorfer

March 31, 2014 by Improviser

Franz Lehrndorfer (10 August 1928 – 10 January 2013) was a German organist and composer. A specialist in organ improvisation, he was for decades both the organist of the Munich cathedral Frauenkirche and the head of the department of Catholic Church Music at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München.
You can hear him on Spotify.

Recordings:

Die Heitere Orgel: Improvisationen Uber Kinderlieder [The Merry Organ: Improvisations On Children’s Songs]