James David Christie
James David Christie has been internationally acclaimed as one of the finest organist of his generation. He has performed around the world with symphony orchestras and period instrument ensembles as well as in solo recitals. He has served as organist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1978 and has performed and recorded under such conductors as James Levine, Sir Colin Davis, John Williams, Edo de Waart, Gerard Schwartz, Jeffrey Tate, Seiji Ozawa, Sarah Caldwell, Andrew Davis, Klaus Tennstedt, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Trevor Pinnock, Sir Roger Norrington, Bernard Haitink, Charles Dutoit, Christopher Hogwood, Andrew Parrott, etc. He has been a guest professor at conservatories in New York, Paris, Krakow, Vienna, Bolzano, Montreal and Brussels and gives over thirty master classes every year. He is the Distinguished Artist in Residence and College Organist at College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, and Chair and Professor of Organ at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio. He also holds positions at both Wellesley College and Harvard University, where he is oversees both the Renaissance-style Fisk organ in Wellesley’s Houghton Chapel and the E. Power Biggs Flentrop organ in Adolphus Busch Hall (formerly the Busch-Reisinger Museum). He has previously held positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and Boston Conservatory.
James David Christie received his degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the New England Conservatory, including the coveted Artist Diploma. He has studied with David Boe, Yuko Hayashi, Bernard Lagacé, Harald Vogel and Marie-Claire Alain. He has performed as soloist with the Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Mainly Mozart Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, London Symphony, Rheinland Philharmonic, Bach Ensemble, Baltimore Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Boston Philharmonic, etc. He has premiered works by Daniel Pinkham, Ellen Taafe Zwilich, Ned Rorem, Anton Heiller, Jean Langlais, Thea Musgrave, George Crumb, P. D. Q. Bach and many others. James David Christie is Music Director of Ensemble Abendmusik, a Boston-based period instrument orchestra and chorus specializing in sacred music of the 17th and 18th centuries. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the New England School of Law for his outstanding contributions to the musical life of Boston and was also awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater, the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston.
James David Christie has served on international organ competition juries in Paris, St. Omer-Wasquehal, Bordeaux, Biarritz, Bordeaux, Chartres Cathedral, Liège, Montreal, Dublin, St. Albans, Worcester, Calgary, Tokyo, Kaliningrad, Leipzig, Lübeck, Weimar, Speyer, Erfurt, Lausanne, Boston, Dallas, Columbus, Amsterdam and Bruges (four times). He was the 1979 First Prize winner of the Bruges International Organ Competition, where he was the first American to ever win First Prize in this competition and the first person in the eighteen-year history of the competition to win both the First Prize and the Prize of the Audience. He has given over 40 concert tours of Europe, Asia and Iceland. He has performed frequently for National and Regional AGO Conventions and events throughout the United States. His students have been international prizewinners in organ competitions in the United States, Europe, South Africa and Japan. Recently, several of his Oberlin students won first prizes in Dublin, Leipzig, San Marino, Biarritz (France), Miami and Fort Wayne; in the summer of 2010, three of his Oberlin undergraduates won Quimby/RYCO competitions at AGO regional conventions in New York City, Boston and Detroit and performed “Rising Star” concerts at the 2010 AGO National Convention in Washington, DC
Last season, he performed the complete organ works of Dieterich Buxtehude at College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Harvard University. In addition, he performed 22 concerts dedicated to Buxtehude's music during the 300th anniversary commemoration of the composer's death. James David Christie has given over 45 concert tours of Europe and Asia and most recently performed concerts and gave master classes in Estonia, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Monaco and France. He is a regular member of the McGill University Summer Organ Academy faculty in Montreal, the Oberlin Summer Organ Academy, the Bressanone/Brixin Early Music Festival and the Musica Antiqua Festival and Academy in Bolzano, Italy. He recently served on international competition juries in Erfurt (Germany), Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Graz (Austria), St. Albans (England), and Montreal (Canada). He performed a solo recital on the beautiful organ at Our Lady of Sorrows in Toronto for the 2010 International Organ Festival of the Royal College of Canadian Organists and, the very next day, performed the opening gala concert of the 2010 Region I and II American Guild of Organists Convention in Symphony Hall, Boston, with the New Philharmonia Orchestra in an all-French program of works for organ and orchestra by Dupré, Poulenc, Langlais, Guilmant, and Louis Vierne. Highlights of the 2010-2010 season included a three-week tour of Japan, a one month European tour including a lecture at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, as part of an international symposium on organ music in France in the 1930s. In the fall of 2010, he will be on sabbatical and will be guest professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory for four months, replacing Notre Dame organist, Oliver Latry, who will be visiting guest professor of organ at the Oberlin Conservatory during that same time period. During his sabbatical, he will also perform concerts throughout Europe and Russia, do extensive research on French women organ composers from 1890 to 1950 and he will prepare editions of several unknown French organ compositions from this same period for publication. James David Christie has recorded for Decca, Philips, Nonesuch, JAV, Northeastern, Arabesque, Denon, RCA, Dorian, Naxos, Bridge Records and GM Records; he has received numerous awards including the prestigious Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik and the Coup de Coeur de Magazine de l’Orgue.