Jeremy Filsell, an international artist hailed as one of only a few virtuoso performers as both pianist and organist, will present a piano recital in the First Presbyterian Church Sanctuary, on Sunday, March 22, at 2:00 PM. The event is free and open to the public.
Jeremy Filsell is one of only a few virtuoso performers as both pianist and organist. He has appeared as a solo pianist in Russia, Scandinavia, New Zealand and Australia and throughout the USA and UK. His concerto repertoire encompasses Bach, Mozart and Beethoven through to Shostakovich, John Ireland, Constant Lambert and the Rachmaninov cycle. He has recorded the solo piano music of Herbert Howells, Bernard Stevens, Eugène Goossens and Johann Christoph Eschmann and recent releases include discs of Rachmaninov’s solo piano music (Signum), the first and second Rachmaninov Concertos (Raven), the piano music of Francis Pott (Acis), and the Clavier-Übung III of J. S Bach, recorded on all five pipe organs in Saint Thomas Church, New York. Reviewing this recording, Gramophone magazine stated that here was ‘a hundred minutes of masterly insight into this highly organized manifestation of Lutheran principles [played] with fastidious care to mood and scale, Filsell providing yet another masterclass in manual and pedal dexterity packed with interpretative insights; a Clavier-Übung III to savour and revisit.’
Jeremy Filsell is on the international roster of Steinway Piano Artists and has recorded for BBC Radio 3, USA, and Scandinavian radio networks in solo and concerto roles. His discography comprises more than 35 solo recordings. Gramophone magazine commented on the series of 12 CDs comprising the premiere recordings of Marcel Dupré’s complete organ works for Guild in 2000 that it was ‘one of the greatest achievements in organ recording’. In 2005, Signum released a 3-disc set of the six organ symphonies of Louis Vierne, recorded on the 1890 Cavaillé-Coll organ in St. Ouen, Rouen.
Jeremy has taught at universities, summer schools, and conventions in both the UK and US and has served on international competition juries in England, Switzerland and the US. Solo engagements have taken him across this country, the UK and to Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Australia and New Zealand in recent years. In North America, he concertizes under the auspices of Philip Truckenbrod Concert Artists. As a teenager, Jeremy was a Limpus, Shinn & Durrant prizewinner for FRCO and was awarded the Silver Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians for the highest marks in that examination. Thereafter, as a student of Nicolas Kynaston in London and Daniel Roth in Paris, he studied as Organ Scholar at Keble College, Oxford University before completing graduate studies in piano performance with David Parkhouse and Hilary McNamara at the Royal College of Music in London. His PhD, from Birmingham City University/Conservatoire, focused on research into aesthetic and interpretative issues in the music of Marcel Dupré.
Before moving permanently to the US in 2008, Jeremy held Academic and Performance lectureships at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and lived in Windsor Castle for nine years as an alto lay clerk in the Queen’s choir at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Since residing in the US, he has combined an international recital and teaching career with being Director of Music at the Church of the Epiphany in Washington DC, Artist-in-Residence at Washington National Cathedral, and Professor of Organ at Peabody Conservatory (Baltimore). In April 2019, he moved to New York to become Organist & Director of Music at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue – the last remaining church with a dedicated boarding choir school for boys singing choral liturgies five days a week. At Saint Thomas he broadened the artistic profile of the church’s concert series, expanded the choir’s repertoire to include more American and 21st-century music, and recorded commercially the choral music of William Byrd, Gerre Hancock, Calvin Hampton, and most recently, of Kenneth Leighton (Signum). Recently, having been associated musically with Sarasota for over twenty-five years, Jeremy was appointed Director of Music at Christ Episcopal Church in Bradenton in 2025.
