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Douglas Mews - 1 July 2012 |
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Organ Concert
Sunday 1 July 2012 at 2:30 pm
Great Hall Auckland Town Hall
THE EDGE
Admission FREE
The Lost Chord
- and other tragedies
It is a great pleasure to welcome the Wellington City Organist, DOUGLAS MEWS, to give the next in the series of free Sunday Afternoon Organ Concerts.
His programme will include Tchaikovsky - Romeo and Juliet - and music by Bach, Sullivan and Ravel.
He will also be playing a piece titled Gigue de Pan by his late father, Professor Douglas Mews.
Programmes containing notes on each piece will be available on the day.
This is a free concert, with sponsorship support from THE EDGE.
There will be a retiring donation / koha to support the continuing Town Hall Organ programme.
DOUGLAS MEWS, Wellington City Organist, began playing the organ at St Patrick's Cathedral in Auckland, where his father (and first organ teacher) Dr Douglas Mews was choir conductor in the 1970's. Private lessons with Kenneth Weir followed, and then university study with the late Anthony Jennings, graduating from Auckland University in 1979 with a Masters degree in organ and harpsichord. He then continued his harpsichord studies with Bob van Asperen at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague, and later expanded his interest in historical keyboards to include the fortepiano.
He is currently Artist Teacher in organ and harpsichord at the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington, broadcasts for Concert FM and directs the music at St Teresa’s church in Karori. In 2010 he recorded a CD on the Wellington Town Hall organ for Priory Records' Great Australasian Organs. His most recent CD (yet to be released) is The Lost Chord, also recorded at the Wellington Town Hall.
Besides early keyboards, Douglas enjoys being accompanist on the modern piano, as in the play Home, featuring Rowena Simpson and Stuart Coats singing traditional Scottish songs. Home will be touring the country in November this year.
In 2013, Douglas will give a recital on the 50th anniversary of the Walker organ at St John the Evangelist R.C. Church in Islington, London, the same instrument on which his father, Dr Douglas Mews, gave the opening recital in February 1963. A few audience members from the opening recital are still alive, remembering most of all the bitterly cold church. Winter of that year was one of the coldest on record, being officially known as "The Big Freeze of '63". Nowadays, recitals take place in the warmer months only. |
