What a Classic! (Audio CD) Thomas Heywood

The internationally acclaimed organ virtuoso Thomas Heywood enjoys an outstanding ­reputation as one of the world’s finest concert organists. As the first and only Australian ­musician in history to live as a professional ­concert organist, 30 year-old Heywood is renowned for his truly unique ability to make the greatest music of all time come alive on the King of Instruments. Touring extensively around the world, Heywood has an amazingly ­comprehensive repertoire of over 5,000 works. He is ­celebrated as “an acknowledged master” for his solo ­performances and spoken introductions. Also a talented and prolific transcriber, Heywood’s solo concert organ arrangements of the most ­famous classical and romantic music are published for world-wide distribution. Heywood is also performing and recording his arrangements of the complete Beethoven symphonies for concert organ solo, ­becoming the first solo artist in history to successfully perform these musical landmarks. Heywood’s international solo concert tours meet with record crowds and standing ovations stunning audiences and critics alike. After last year’s unprecedented successes, the latest international solo tour of “Australia’s Premier Organist” was a complete triumph dazzling audiences from St Paul’s Cathedral, London to San Diego, California where he received standing ovations both before interval and at the end of the concert – only the third organist to do so in the nearly 90 years of concerts on the world’s largest outdoor pipe organ! In 2006 his demanding schedule incorporates nearly six months touring throughout the UK, Ireland and the USA. Performing solo concerts in Concert Halls, Town Halls, Cathedrals and Churches from London to Dallas, Heywood has also been invited to perform solo concerts in Windsor Castle and Edinburgh’s renowned Usher Hall. Born into a Melbourne musical family in 1974, Heywood was acknowledged to be a child prodigy giving his first public performance at five after commencing musical studies at the age of four. He has since performed on ­thousands of occasions ranging from a solo ­concert in the Sydney Opera House at the age of 17 to touring throughout the UK, USA and Europe in venues reading like an encyclopaedia of the world’s most famous organs from the largest pipe organ in New York City to ­St Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna. Since 1994, Heywood has also performed more concerts in Australia than any other organist, maintaining a demanding schedule around the country ­performing to thousands each year. Heywood regularly inaugurates new and ­restored organs. In 2001 he performed the opening solo concert on the largest musical ­instrument in the southern hemisphere – the Grand Concert Organ in the Melbourne Town Hall. Since 1992 when he released Australia’s ­­best-selling organ recording at only 18 years of age, Heywood’s many recordings have all been ­popular sell-out successes receiving ­extraordinary critical acclaim. In 2001, his ­monumental recording “Who Needs An Orchestra!” broke organ sales records ­selling out within two hours of release. Heywood’s ­performances have been broadcast ­internationally on television and radio. Heywood’s solo concerts are administered by Concert Organ International – the management, recording, publishing, marketing and distribution company he founded in 1997 with his wife and manager Simone. Not confined to the “organ world”, Heywood’s phenomenal success in reaching out to the vast concert-going public has made the critics boast that he “reincarnates Edwin H. Lemare”, the greatest concert organist of the twentieth ­century. “what a stunning player Thomas Heywood is. His flawless technique is just the platform from which truly artistic and memorable performances flow” – The Editor’s Choice – Organists’ Review, UK To find out when Thomas Heywood is next ­performing in a venue near you, please visit: concertorgan.com