Nigel Potts - Organ, Jeremy Filsell - Piano

Jeremy Filsell has established a concert career as one of only a few virtuoso performers on both the Piano and the Organ. He has performed as a solo pianist in Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and has appeared regularly at St John’s Smith Square, the Wigmore and Conway Halls in London. He has worked with the BBC Singers and orchestras under Stephen Cleobury, Pierre Boulez, Barry Wordsworth, and Ronald Corp, as repetiteur for John Eliot Gardner, Vernon Handley, and Sir Charles Groves, and he was Pianist with the European Contemporary Music Ensemble between 1989 and 1991. His Concerto repertoire encompasses Mozart and Beethoven through to Rachmaninov (2nd & 3rd Concertos), Shostakovich, and John Ireland. In recent years, he has recorded for Guild the solo piano music of Eugene Goossens, Herbert Howells, Carl Johann Eschmann, Bernard Stevens, and the two Sonatas of Liszt’s pupil Julius Reubke. Classic CD magazine commented that in his pianism “he does not attract for his virtuosity but for his ability to make the music unfold with irresistible logic and clarity: music- making of the highest calibre.” He is Pianist with the Burghersh Piano Trio (with colleagues, Oliver Lewis, Violin and Neil Heyde, Cello), who perform regularly in Chamber Music series within the United Kingdom.

As an organist, Jeremy’s extensive discography comprises solo discs for Guild, Signum, Herald, and ASV. He has recorded for BBC Radio 3 in solo and concerto roles and an extensive solo career has included recent recitals in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany (Landsberg), France (Notre-Dame and St. Sulpice Paris, Chartres Cathedral), Finland (Lahti Festival), Norway (Oslo Dom), and masterclasses in Performance and Interpretation on the Henry Wood (Ireland) and Oundle International Summer Schools, Eton Choral Courses, and at Yale and Utah State Universities. In 1999/2000 he recorded the complete organ works of Marcel Dupré (12 CDs) for Guild, Gramophone magazine commenting that it was “one of the greatest achievements in organ recording...and Filsell’s astonishing interpretative and technical skills make for compulsive listening... truly distinguished, compelling and unquestionably authoritative performances; Filsell has phenomenal technique.” In 2004 he recorded the six Organ Symphonies of Louis Vierne on the 1890 Cavaillé-Coll organ in St. Ouen Rouen for Signum (BBC Radio 3’s Disc of the Week September 2005). Recent recording projects (2010/11) have included two discs of French Mélodies for Naxos (by Vierne, Widor, Dupré, and Tournemire) with Michael Bundy (Baritone), and one of Rachmaninov’s piano music for Signum (Sonata No. 2 in Bb, Op. 36, Etudes-Tableaux, Op.33, and Preludes, Op. 32).

A Limpus prize winner and Silver Medalist of the Worshipful Company of Musicians for FRCO as a teenager, Jeremy graduated from Oxford University as Organ Scholar at Keble College, having pursued organ studies with Nicolas Kynaston and Daniel Roth in Paris. As a post-graduate he studied Piano with David Parkhouse and Hilary McNamara at the Royal College of Music and privately at the University of Surrey with Martin Hughes. He completed a Ph.D. at Birmingham Conservatoire/Birmingham City University, examining aesthetic and interpretative issues in the music of Marcel Dupré.

During the course of his career he has held posts at Cranleigh School, Ely Cathedral, St. Luke’s Chelsea, St. Peter’s Eaton Square, the London Oratory School, Royal Holloway College University of London, and Eton College. Until 2008 he combined teaching posts at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester with a lay clerkship in the choir of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. In 2007 he served for the second time as a jury member at the Concours International pour l’orgue in Saint-Maurice d’Agaune. He lives and works now principally in the United States and combines international performing and teaching activities with being Artist-in-Residence at Washington National Cathedral. He is represented by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.

Nigel Potts was born into a musical family from English grandparents (his grandmother having studied with Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music in London), Nigel’s list of performances includes such distinguished venues as Westminster Abbey (London debut at age 21) and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, Notre-Dame de Paris, The Hallgrimskirkja, Reykjavík, Iceland, Klagenfurt Cathedral, Austria, The Riverside Church & Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, Washington National Cathedral, United States Naval Academy Chapel, Annapolis, Woolsey Hall, Yale University, Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, Dunedin & Wellington Town Halls, New Zealand, Hong Kong Cultural Center, and various venues in Australia and Singapore.

An exponent of orchestral transcriptions and a respected champion of 19th and 20th century British organ music, Nigel Potts is admired for his “intuitive grasp of the grand British style...secure technique, idiomatic phrasing and expression” (The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians). He has performed Percy Whitlock and Edward Elgar concerts celebrating the composers’ Centenary and 150th Anniversaries, and was invited to perform the Elgar Organ Sonata at the first ever North American Conference of the Elgar Society in Dallas. In 2010 Nigel Potts presented a workshop on British Organ Music of the 19th and 20th Centuries at the American Guild of Organists National Convention in Washington, D.C. In 2011/12 Nigel will feature in a unique duo concert program by performing his orchestral reduction of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor with Jeremy Filsell, pianist. He has also collaborated with New York City based British mezzo-soprano Sarah Rose Taylor, accompanying her with his transcriptions of Elgar’s Sea Pictures & Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder.

His CDs and recitals have been reviewed favorably by critics around the world and have been broadcast on radio/web stations in Australia, Iceland, New Zealand, and on Pipedreams in the United States. In 2009 Nigel recorded a program of transcriptions (including his own transcription of Liszt’s Liebestraume) on the Wanamaker Organ for Philadelphia’s WRTI-FM radio station. His CD British Fantasies & Fanfares, (which includes the first ever recording of York Bowen’s complete solo organ works), has been critiqued as “one of the best, most subtle readings of ‘Nimrod’ from Elgar’s Enigma Variations I’ve ever heard” (The New Mexican), “superbly played...a fine interpretation...a strongly recommended CD” (International Record Review, UK), and “...whose interpretive talent is obvious...an excellent recording” (American Record Guide, Nov/Dec 2009).

An advocate of new music, Nigel is the dedicatee of several organ compositions by the British composer Paul Spicer, including Saraband for any 3rd October (premièred at Westminster Abbey) and March for the Retreat of the Governor of Hong Kong (premièred at the Hong Kong Cultural Center). He has also commissioned choral music for his choirs from prominent American and British composers such as Robert Lehman, Bruce Neswick, Paul Spicer, and Richard Webster.

Nigel Potts studied organ with Thomas Murray at Yale University and graduated with a Master of Music Degree in 2002. He holds diplomas from the Conservatorium of Music in Wellington and Trinity College of Music, London. While living in London he studied Church Music at the Royal Academy of Music, played for services at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and studied organ with Jeremy Filsell and John Scott. A recipient of the Gillian Weir Waitangi Foundation Scholarship, Nigel Potts has held Organ Scholarships in New Zealand and at Blackburn and Lichfield Cathedrals in England.

Presently Nigel Potts is Organist and Choirmaster of Christ and Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church, New York City, where he oversaw the installation of the new Schoenstein organ in 2008. He is a member of the music staff at the Saint Thomas Choir School in New York City, an Adjunct Lecturer of Music at Dowling College, New York, a National Examiner for RSCM America, and a past board member of the New York City Chapter of the AGO. As a Rotarian, he has given benefit concerts to raise funds for children from developing countries to have critical heart surgeries in New York. He is represented by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.