Acclaimed Organist Thomas Heywood Celebrates 200 Years Of Organ Music In Australia

Classical organist extraordinaire Thomas Heywood celebrates the 200th anniversary of organ music in Australia with a spectacular concert of classical favourites performed on the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ on Sunday 29 June at 2pm.

With great fanfare, Australia's very first pipe organ had its first public performance on 15 May, 1825 at St David's Church in Hobart. The organ had been ordered in 1824 from a leading London organ builder and was shipped out to Tasmania the following year at great expense.  

And so began the wide spread of Australia's pipe organ heritage. Today, more than 2000 pipe organs can be found across the country in concert halls, town halls, public halls, theatres, universities, schools, cathedrals, churches and private residences. Worth more than one billion dollars in purely monetary terms and priceless in terms of replacement value, these monumental and, in many cases, irreplaceable instruments are the single largest and most valuable ‘objects' owned by the authorities on behalf of their local communities.

“It's thrilling to celebrate 200 years of organ music in Australia,” says Heywood. “For two centuries the music performed on these magnificent instruments - by generations of Australian organists - has been enjoyed by millions of Australians.”

Performing at Melbourne Town Hall on the largest and most expensive musical instrument in the southern hemisphere, Thomas Heywood shares his passion and mastery of the monumental pipe organ.

“I've enjoyed a life-long love affair with the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ since I first performed on it when I was 16 years old,” says Heywood.

“I am profoundly grateful for the wonderful times I had with the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ as a kid growing up in Melbourne in the 1980s. It really was the most amazing experience imaginable as a teenager - having such regular access to the power and grandeur of that magnificent instrument. It was very much the 1992 solo recording of the Melbourne Town Hall Organ - sponsored by the City of Melbourne for the City's 150th birthday - that launched my international career.”

The popular classical music program will include works from Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Salomé, Chopin and Rossini and features Heywood's brand-new transcriptions of epic works by Brahms, Chopin, Bizet and Smetana.

An internationally renowned Australian organ virtuoso Thomas Heywood enjoys an outstanding reputation. The American Organist wrote in 2019: ‘without argument one of the world's best concert organists whose primary goal is to touch a wide public with music that stirs the soul as much as it stimulates the mind. His technique is impeccable and seemingly limitless. His command of musical style, particularly in large Romantic works, allows him to make them spring to life in the organ's unique idiom.'

Heywood has travelled more than 1.2 million kilometres performing solo concerts on the most celebrated pipe organs across the globe. He has an ever-growing repertoire of more than 5,000 works and was the first Australian musician in history to live as a professional concert organist. His premiere CD and DVD of the new Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ broke records and became among the best-selling organ recordings of all time.

Thomas Heywood - Concert Organ Spectacular!