Edgar Krapp was born in Bamberg and received his first organ lessons at the age of ten as a member of the Regensburger Domspatzen.

Later he studied with Franz Lehrndorfer at the Munich Musikhochschule and with Marie-Claire Alain in Paris. After winning first prize at the international music competition of the ARD in 1971, he began his career as concert organist and educationalist.

Since then he has performed in many European countries, in America and in Japan. His broad repertoire, including works ranging from the early organ literature to the modern age, is documented on many records, radio and television recordings which for the most part were made with historical instruments.

Edgar Krapp has rendered particularly outstanding service to the organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, which he has previously performed as a cycle in Frankfurt, Nuremberg, at the Rheingau Music Festival and in Munich (the latter with a live broadcast).

The main emphasis of his work lies in concert performances with orchestra conducted by such distinguished musicians as Rafael Kubelik, Georges Prêtre, Colin Davis, Lorin Maazel, Vladimir Fedoseyev, Horst Stein and Christoph Eschenbach, with whom, among others, he has performed the organ concertos by Handel, the organ symphonies by Camille Saint-Saëns and Alexandre Guilmant, the organ concertos by Francis Poulenc, Paul Hindemith and Harald Genzmer, as well as premières including the works for organ and orchestra by Günter Bialas, Hans Jürgen von Bose and Rafael Kubelik. He has collaborated with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Bamberg Symphonica, the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the ORF Orchestra Vienna and the Vienna Symphonica, among others.

From 1974 to 1993, Edgar Krapp taught at the Frankfurt Musikhochschule, where he succeeded Helmut Walcha. He was a guest professor from 1982 to 1991 at the Salzburg Mozarteum.

In 1993 he joined the Munich Musikhochschule. In recognition of his artistic and educational services, he was awarded the Frankfurt Music Prize, the E.T.A. Hoffmann Prize of the town of Bamberg as well as the Friedrich Baur Prize.

He is a member of the directorate of the Neue Bachgesellschaft Leipzig and the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Krapp

Born in 1944, he has got education as organist, pianist and conductor. He is Laureate of the International Organist Competitions in Austria, Belgium, Germany and Italy. At present time he is conductor of the Cathedral in the Saarland where he leads also Philharmonic chorus and Bach society.

In 1992-1994 he headed the orchestra to Estonian philharmonic, since 1995 he has been a main quest conductor of the Minsk Philharmonic. Kremer also teaches at germane High Schools, tales part in Jury of many International organist Competitions.

He annually conducts with Chamber orchestra of the St.Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra the concert cycles, presenting styles from early baroque to late romanticism and expressionism. Many programs, played in Petersburg, had a great success during tours in cities of Germany.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Kr%C3%A4mer

Kei Koito enjoys her career as an esteemed concert organist. She has performed throughout Europe, Russia, Japan, and the Americas. She is acclaimed for her expertise on Baroque and Renaissance music, especially that of J.S. Bach. Kei Koito has won numerous prestigious prizes as a recording artist and is often invited to judge international organ competitions. She is also a founder of the Festival Bach de Lausanne (Lausanne Bach Festival/Bachfest Lausanne), of which she has served as artistic director since its genesis in 1997. Kei Koito is currently an organ professor at the Haute Ecole de Musique/ Conservatoire de Lausanne (Lausanne University of Music/Musikhochschule Lausanne) in Switzerland.

Kei Koito was born in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, into a family of artists. Her childhood was steeped in the arts and culture. She was attracted at an early age to the world of music, especially that of J.S. Bach. She began her musical training at the age of six, first with piano, followed by cello and voice. At the age of twelve, she discovered the organ, which soon became her favorite instrument.

As a student at Hiranuma College of Yokohama, Kei Koito played the cello for two years in the school orchestra. Also as a proficient pianist, she performed Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with City Orchestra of Yokohama. After graduation from this High School, she decided to commit herself to organ studies. She was sixteen at that time.

Kei Koito graduated from National University of Fine Arts and Music of Tokyo/Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, where she achieved high distinctions in organ, harpsichord, music theory, chamber music, philosophy and musical esthetics. She also has a master’s degree from the Conservatory of Geneva/Conservatoire de Genève/Musikhochschule, Genf, where she won several prestigious prizes including the First Prize of Organ Virtuosity with distinction, of Improvization and of Basso Continuo, Special Grand Prix of the Year, and Otto Barblan Prize for the best interpretation of J.S. Bach. All was awarded unanimously.

Kei Koito studied organ under Pierre Segond (general organ studies) in Geneva, and under Xavier Darasse (romantic, symphonic and contemporary repertoires) in Toulouse. She also studied early music performance and introduction to musicological research with Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini in Fribourg, baroque music with Reinhard Goebel in Köln, and orchestration, music analysis and composition with Eric Gaudibert in Geneva.

Starting in 1985, Kei Koito focused in on the music of J.S. Bach and his important predecessors such as Buxtehude, Böhm, Bruhns, Frescobaldi, Kerll, Froberger, Muffat, Pachelbel, Fischer, de Grigny, Couperin, and their precursors. Consequently, the research of early music became one of Kei Koito’s major interests. She not only adapts her style of playing based on principles of early performance practices, but incorporates her own understanding and observation of historical instruments, and her personal inspiration and intuition into her playing.

Prior to 1985, Kei Koito was a keen performer of romantic and symphonic music (Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Reubke, Widor, Duruflé, etc…).

Between 1978 and 1996, she was ardently involved in avant-garde music including Ligeti, early Maxwell Davies, Berio, and other 20th-century composers from all over the world. She devoted considerable amounts of time to performing world premieres of newly composed pieces, some of which were dedicated to her.

Kei Koito’s interpretation of music for every repertory is defined not only by the different aesthetics of the relevant repertoire, but also by the direct emotional impact which engenders contemporary audiences.

Kei Koito made her professional debut in a series of recitals at Victoria Hall in Geneva and Auditorium Maurice Ravel in Lyon.

As a highly acclaimed concert organist, Kei Koito is regularly invited to perform as a soloist at the most distinguished festivals and concert venues throughout Europe, Asia, and North and South America.

Her vast performance experience includes playing with the Baroque Orchestra Musica Antiqua Köln (dir. Reinhard Goebel) for J.S. Bach’s Cantatas, Organ Sinfonias and Händel’s Organ Concertos, and the Vocal Ensemble Gilles Binchois (dir. Dominique Vellard) for the Italian Renaissance/Baroque and the French classical/pre-classical repertoires. She has also performed Concertos by Haydn and Rheinberger with Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and the Concerto for Organ by Francis Poulenc with Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

http://www.kei-koito.com/

Ferdinand Klinda born 28 August 1929 in Košice is a Slovakian organist (born Czechoslovakia).
He studied music at the Conservatory and the Bratislava Academy of Music (organ, piano, musical composition) with Stephan Nemeth–Samorinsky, Riegler–Skalisky then took lessons with Josef Rheinberger in Weimar.

Since 1965, he played as soloist with the Slovak Philharmonic. He served on many international juries (Member of the Jury Grand Prix de Chartres 1972). Performing in a large organ repertoire from Bach to Charles Chaynes, he wrote several musicological works (organ playing).

http://www.osobnosti.sk/index.php?os=zivotopis&ID=59678

Born in Gran in Hungary in 1930, Stephan Klinda has a formation of choirmaster, organist (Prof Pécsi) and conducting in Budapest and Vienna, and composer (Rezsö Kokay Ferenc Farkas).

From 1960 to 1963 he studied at the Vienna Academy of Music, in orchestral conducting (Prof. Swarowsky).

He has given concerts in Austria and Europe several times been a soloist at the Salzburg Festival, and o. HS professor at MHS Mozarteum of Salzburg for organ classes.

Jury at prestigious organ competitions (Member of the Jury Grand Prix de Chartres 1978), founder and artistic director of the international week of the organ in Salzburg, he founded the chamber orchestra “I Solisti da Chiesa”.

Prizes and competitions : 1958, international prices at the organ competition “Prague Spring”, and contest Bach of Gand. In 1963 he was appointed professor at the Mozarteum.

Albert de Klerk, Haarlem, October 4, 1917 – Amsterdam, December 2, 1998, Dutch composer and organist.

De Klerk studied at the Amsterdam Conservatory, where he studied with Anthon van der Horst, Cornelis de Wolf and Hendrik Andriessen. Its sixteenth year until his death, he was organist at St. Joseph Church in Haarlem. From 1956 to 1982 he was with the organist Piet Kee in Haarlem and played the organ at St. Bavo Church.
De Klerk in 1939 graduated cum laude organ and distinguished for improvisation.
From 1946 to 1991 conducted the choir founded by himself in Haarlem (Haarlem Concert Choir now). He also gave nearly 20 years (until 1964) in Utrecht organ lessons. In 1965 he was appointed head of the organ professor at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, later at the Sweelinck Conservatory, a position he held until 1985.

As a composer, he wrote music for organ, 3 concerts for organ and orchestra, several works for orchestra, vocal music, church music and carillon music. In 1964 and 1976, De Klerk was jury of international organ competition in the Musica Antique Festival in Bruges.

Among others, were his students : Bob van Asperen, Bernard Bartelink, Gemma Coebergh, Leo van Doeselaar, Eckhardt, Peter Lau, Wim Madderom, Gonny van der sizes, Hans van Nieuwkoop, Gert Oost, Ben East, Willem Poot, Theo Saris , Lourens Stuifbergen, Ton Vijverberg Bernard Winsemius, Dorthy de Rooij.

Lothar Klein was born in Hannover, Germany in 1932, raised in England, educated in the United States, and, became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1985. By age 12, he was already an excellent pianist. From the time he was a young boy he was attracted to symphonic music. He received a diversified education, which included studies in philosophy and literature and piano with Olga Samaroff-Stokowski.

From early in his creative career, Lothar was writing works for some two dozen stage and for film productions, earning the Golden Reel Award from the American Academy of Film Sciences in 1956. Other awards include Rockefeller New Music Prizes (1965 and 1967) and the Greenwood Choral Prize (1968, for Three Chinese Laments), and the Floyd S. Chalmers Performing Arts Creation Award in 1982.

His compositional efforts were encouraged by Dimitri Mitropoulos, Antal Dorati and Goffretto Petrassi. He also studied with leading exponents of the avant-garde in Berlin. He studied composition with Paul Fetler at the University of Minnesota, orchestration privately with Antal Dorati (1956-8), and composition in 1956 with Goffredo Petrassi at Tanglewood and on a Fulbright Fellowship (1958-60) with Josef Rufer and Boris Blacher in Berlin, and Luigi Nono in Darmstadt. In 1961, he received a Ph.D. in Musicology and Composition from the University of Minnesota.

He taught at the Hochschule für Musik as assistant to Boris Blacher (1958-60) and at the Universitiy of Minnesota (1962-4) and the University of Texas (1964-8) before joining the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto as Professor of Composition in 1968. He became Chairman of Graduate Studies in Music (1971-76).

His music has been performed by virtually every North-American symphony orchestra and performed by such conductors as Karel Ancerl, George Szell, André Previn, Akiro Akiyama, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Walter Susskind, Franz-Paul Decker, Heinrich Bender, Antal Dorati, Milton Katims, Victor Feldbrill, Werner Torkanowsky, and Stanislaus Skrowaczewski.

Lothar’s works are as prolific as they are diverse, with over 150 compositions, including more than thirty orchestral works. “He had a special interest in writing for the orchestra”, said his friend and fellow composer John Weinzweig.

Lothar Klein’s orchestral works prompted Irving Kolodin of the Saturday Review to refer to him as a “composer of excellent equipment and considerable enterprise… his eyes, too, are on the stars“. Indeed, orchestral music occupied a prominent place in Klein’s catalogue of compositions. Arthur Cohn, writing in Hi-Fidelity, praised him as “an orchestral craftsman of a very high order”. No less a composer then Witold Lutoslawski has praised his orchestral skills “of great brio and temperament”.

In 1966, when Kolodin’s review appeared, Lothar Klein was one of four young North American composers whose works had been chosen by George Szell for a Cleveland Orchestra premiere. Klein’s work, Musique à Go-Go (A Symphonic Mêlée) (1966), a jazzy, virtuosic orchestral study, was described by High Fidelity as “a veritable tour de force worthy of Ravel and Stan Kenton”. With over 100 performances of Musique à Go-Go, his many other orchestral works have been performed at music festivals all over the World, making Lothar Klein one of the most often performed, if not the most internationally recognized Canadian composer of concert music.

http://www.lotharklein.org/

Robert Burns King, a native of South Carolina, is Organist-Choirmaster of First Presbyterian Church in Burlington, North Carolina, Instructor of Organ at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and University Organist at Elon University.

He was graduated from Furman University with degrees in Organ and French, and holds the Master of Sacred Music degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he studied organ with Vernon de Tar of the Juilliard School.

As a Fulbright Scholar, King studied in Paris with Jean Langlais and Maurice Duruflé and was the first American to win the Prix de Virtuosité from the Paris Schola Cantorum. He has also studied with Michael Schneider in Cologne Germany.

King has performed in Germany, France, Italy, Scotland, and Portugal, and this past summer played an organ recital at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.

He has appeared with the North Carolina Symphony and at regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists.

Born in Germany, Sarah Kim is an Australian organist of Korean origin, who is now based in Paris.

She began her musical studies (piano and violin) at an early age in Cologne and had her first organ lessons with Miriam Gaydon at the age of eleven in Sydney. After finishing high school, she studied organ with Philip Swanton at the Sydney Conservatorium Music, where she graduated from a Bachelor of Music Performance course with First Class Honours and the Sydney University Medal. During her student days at the Conservatorium, Sarah held several organ scholar positions at the University of Sydney, St Paul’s College and St James’ Anglican Church. She performed with numerous ensembles including the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Youth Orchestra and the Sydney Chamber Choir. As a soloist she performed in major concert venues including the Sydney, Perth and Melbourne Town Halls and the Sydney Opera House.

On completion of her studies, Sarah Kim was awarded a University of Sydney overseas travelling scholarship and became the first Australian organist ever to be accepted into the ‘Cycle de Perfectionnement’ and Master course at the Paris Conservatoire, where she studied under the tutelage of Oliver Latry and Michel Bouvard. She subsequently pursued further studies with Wolfgang Zerer, Andrea Marcon, Lorenzo Ghielmi and Jörg-Andreas Bötticher at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where she gained a specialised Masters degree in early music.
Prize-winner of the Sydney, Newcastle and Paris International Organ Competitions, Sarah Kim has given masterclasses at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Oundle International Summer Academy in the UK.

She has performed at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Westminster Abbey, Mont St Michel, the Royal Chapel in Versailles, Stavanger Concert Hall, the Musikverein in Vienna and in the Berlin Philharmonie. She has featured as soloist with the Swedish Baroque Orchestra, the Oxford Band of Instruments and the Bordeaux Orchestra and has given duo concerts throughout Italy and Paris with her mentor, Jean Guillou. She also plays regularly with the Parisian ensemble ‘le Balcon’ and the l’Orchestre National de France.
Sarah Kim is currently organist at l’Oratoire du Louvre in Paris.

Sarah KIM – Chartres 2010

James Kibbie is Professor of Organ at the University of Michigan. He also maintains a full schedule of concert, recording, and festival engagements throughout North America and Europe, including appearances at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, Royal Festival Hall in London, Dvorak Hall in Prague, and Lincoln Center in New York. During his month-long concert tour of the Soviet Union in 1991, Pravda hailed him as “a marvelous organist, a brilliant interpreter.” A frequent jury member of international organ competitions, he has himself been awarded the Grand Prix d’Interprétation at the prestigious International Organ Competition of Chartres, France, and is also the only American to have won the International Organ Competition of the Prague Spring Festival in Czechoslovakia.

James Kibbie’s performances have been broadcast on radio and television in the USA, Canada, and Europe. His compact disc recordings include “Merrily on Hill” recorded on the famed Skinner organ in Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, “Clavierübung III” by J. S. Bach recorded on the Létourneau organs of the Cathedral of St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, works of Dieterich Buxtehude performed on the historic 1687 Schnitger organ of Norden, Germany, and discs of music by Alain, Tournemire, Sowande, Morrison, and contemporary Czech composers. Dr. Kibbie’s “audio holiday cards,” recorded on the Létourneau organ in his residence and issued as free internet downloads, are a popular annual tradition.

James Kibbie is internationally renowned as an authority on the organ music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He has performed the complete cycle of Bach organ works in a series of eighteen recitals and is in constant demand as a Bach recitalist and clinician. His recent recordings of the complete Bach works on historic baroque organs in Germany have been welcomed with enthusiastic critical and audience acclaim. Thanks to generous support from Dr. Barbara Furin Sloat in honor of J. Barry Sloat, the University of Michigan is offering james Kibbie’s recordings of all 270 Bach works as free internet downloads at www.blockmrecords.org/bach.

James Kibbie’s students perform frequently in concerts, competitions and workshops in the USA and abroad. His former students hold key positions in college teaching and church music nationally. Among the honors he has received, James Kibbie is particularly proud of the ‘James Kibbie Scholarship’, endowed in perpetuity by the University of Michigan to support students majoring in organ performance and church music.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jkibbie/Site/Home.html