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Dexter Kennedy has been appointed Director of Music and Organist at Trinity-by-the-Cove Episcopal Church in Naples, Florida, effective September 1, 2021. At Trinity, Dexter will serve as principal organist, director of Trinity’s 12-voice professional choir, curator of Trinty’s three organs, and artistic director of the Music at Trinity Concert Series.
The year 2020 marks the bicentennial of the birth of César Franck. In commemoration of Franck’s immense contribution to the organ repertoire, Dexter Kennedy will be celebrating Franck’s music during the 2022 concert season.
The music of César Franck was decidedly ground breaking for its time, establishing a seriousness that had not been seen in the French organ school since the Baroque period. Highlighted by poetically lyric, expressive melodies and ingenious motivic development, these works are befittingly placed at the pinnacle of the organ repertoire and charted the course for the French organ school of the 19th and 20th centuries.
As the winner of the Grand Prize of Interpretation at the Chartres International Organ Competition, Dexter Kennedy has established himself as “one of the leading organist of our times” (Iceland Monitor) and a prominent performer of the French organ repertoire. The works of Franck are ideally suited to showcase the performer’s “grand style musicality” (The American Organist).
Mr. Kennedy will be offering this project in four variants:
1. Complete major organ works across two individual programs, either on consecutive days or on the same day (afternoon performance and evening performance)
2. Franck Highlights (Single program).
3. Unknown Franck: A combination of beloved favorites as well as lesser known works and transcriptions.
4. Franck and the Ste. Clotilde Tradition: A survey of works by Franck and his successors at the Basilica of Ste. Clotilde in Paris, which include revered composers such as Jean Langlais, Charles Tournemire, Gabriel Pierné, and Ermend Bonnal
Combinations and/or hybrids of these four offerings can be arranged on an individual, custom basis. Please contact Michael Ging of Seven Eight Artists (michael@seveneightartists.com) or Dexter Kennedy directly to discuss alternate programmatic possibilities.
Dexter Kennedy was featured on two recent programs of American Public Media’s Pipedreams program, performing works of August Gottfried Ritter and Gabriel Pierné. Listen to the performances – https://pipedreams.publicradio.org/listings/2018/1814/, https://pipedreams.publicradio.org/listings/2018/1825/.
Dexter Kennedy has joined the artist roster of Seven Eight Artist Management, who will oversee all his performance engagements worldwide. His artist page can be found here:
Dexter Kennedy has been appointed Guest Organ Teacher in Residence at Oberlin College and Conservatory for portions of the 2017 Fall Semester. He will assume the studio teaching duties of Professor and chair James David Christie.
Dexter Kennedy has completed his 2017 Summer European Concert Tour. The tour was marked by 10 performances in 5 countries and included several historical important organs and venues. Among them included the 1880 Cavaillé-Coll organ at Orléans Cathedral, the 1960 Metzler in Zürich’s Grossmünster, and the world famous 1738 Christian Müller Organ in St. Bavokerk, Haarlem. The tour also featured Kennedy’s first concert appearances in Norway, where he performed three programs for the Bergen International Organ Festival. Midway through this tour, Kennedy traveled to England to join the Christ Church Grosse Pointe Schola in two, weekly choral residencies at Westminster Abbey and Salisbury Cathedral.
On June 10, 2017, Dexter Kennedy made his first concert appearance in South America in the Catédral Primada of Bogotá, Colombia. Kennedy was brought to Bogotá for the Bach en Bogotá Festival, an organized performance of Bach’s complete organ works heard in their entirety for the first time in Colombia’s history. The Bach works Kennedy was asked to perform were BWV’s 568, 563, 1085, 558, , 592, 543, 721, 727, 589, 591, and 547. The day before the recital, Kennedy offered a masterclass to local organ students in works of Mozart and Pachelbel. A press video of this performance can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr1x8OdymKI
Dexter Kennedy was heard on the Pipedreams Radio Program (American Public Media) on the December 28 program entitled “An Organist’s Yearbook”. He was heard performing Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in B Major, which came from a live performance at the 2015 AGO Southeast Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. This was the first time on Pipedreams for Kennedy, wrapping up a most exciting 2015 season that included 21 solo recitals (15 of which were in Europe) as well as 2 performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. Watch the entire recital from Charlotte on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lwfuClWicA