Kevin Bowyer

Kevin John Bowyer (/ˈboʊjər/; born 9 January 1961) is an English organist, known for his prolific recording and recital career and his performances of modern and extremely difficult compositions.

"[2] He attended Cecil Jones High School in Southend, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music from 1979 to 1982 with organists Christopher Bowers-Broadbent and Douglas Hawkridge, harpsichordist Virginia Black, and Paul Steinitz.

After graduation, he studied for two years with David Sanger after winning a Countess of Munster Musical Trust scholarship.

When given a list of music to prepare at his first meeting with Sanger, he did not realise that it was a term's work and had learnt it all by the next week.

[2] Aside from playing the organ, he reads modernist literature, especially James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and the Powys family.

He was able to do this because, he says, "When I was 21, I developed a technique that allowed me to learn a French organ symphony every month" and "always started at the end and then worked backwards.

[5][6] He is the only person to have played and recorded Kaikhosru Sorabji's First Organ Symphony in its entirety.

[7] That it [Sorabji's First Organ Symphony] is finally becoming known, more than sixty years later [than it was published, in 1925], is due entirely to the uniquely enterprising spirit, astounding prowess and unending and unbending patience and dedication of the most outstanding organist of his generation, who, in his continuing work in preparing for performance and recording Sorabji's Second and Third Organ Symphonies (which of necessity includes fair-copying them longhand), is singlehandedly rewriting the history of organ music since Liszt.He was organist of the Parish of Warwick from 1989 until 1998; during this time, he taught around the country for the St Giles International Organ School.

"[2] A particular example has been when he had to learn Niccolo Castiglioni's Sinfonia Guerriere et Amorose, 41 minutes of "nearly unplayable music.

[...] I set my mind to encompass it in an eight-day learning period, a frame-work the piece naturally slipped into.

"[3] Since 2008 he has been able, with the support of the Glasgow University Trust, to be engaged almost exclusively[11] in preparing for performances of Sorabji's three organ symphonies, the difficulties of which he describes thus: In my career as a player of contemporary organ music I've played most of the notorious, "super-difficult" pieces—Iannis Xenakis' Gmeeoorh, Brian Ferneyhough's Sieben Sterne, Niccolò Castiglioni's Sinfonie Guerriere et Amorose, etc.

Sorabji's First Organ Symphony makes all those pieces look like grade 2 finger exercises.