Music in the Meetinghouse and Greater Bridgeport AGO present Maurice Clerc, organist, opening the 15th anniversary celebration of the 2010 Klais pipe organ. First Church Congregational, Fairfield.
Music in the Meetinghouse, the concert series of First Church of Fairfield, and the Greater Bridgeport Chapter of the American Guild of Organists celebrates the 15th anniversary of the church’s 2010 Klais organ with internationally known recitalist and recording artist Maurice Clerc, titular organist emeritus of Saint-Bénigne Cathedral, Dijon, France. Clerc will perform music of Ortiz, Bach, Fleury, Dupre, Litaize, and Cochereau. This performance will be Sunday, October 5, at 4 PM.
Seating is general admission, and tickets are available at the door: $30 adults/$20 seniors/$10 students. For more information, contact office@firstchurchfairfield.org.
About Our Artist
MAURICE CLERC joins in the continuity of the big French tradition while drawing his energy from the dynamism of our time. His numerous concerts, approximately 1300 recitals in some twenty countries among which 28 tours in North America (U.S.A and Canada), were worth to him an international reputation. Traveling four continents for forty years, from Europ to Australia, he played to the prestigious places as Notre-Dame de Paris, the cathedral Saint Patrick of New York, the Dom de Lübeck, the basilica Saint Marc de Venise, an Oratory Saint Joseph of Montreal, the cathedral Saint-Paul of Melbourne, the auditorium of the N.H.K. of Tokyo or Culturel Center of Hong-Kong. In 1987, it is invited to give two of the concerts of inauguration of the big organ Flentrop of the new auditorium of Taipeï. In 1999, he goes to Seoul for the convention of the organists. In 2003, he was again in Hong-Kong, then China, Mexico and from South Africa. In June 2019 he came back to New Zealand and Australia. In 2020, he will be in Hong-Kong and Japan. This international career leads him to occur in leading festivals such Bruges, Ravenna, Madrid, Morelia, Saint Eustache in Paris, Milstatt, Frankfurt, Budapest, Warsaw, Buenos-Aires and Montevideo.
Born in Lyon in 1946, Maurice Clerc is awarded a diploma at the Ecole Normale of Music in Paris where he receives the teaching of Suzanne Chaisemartin, At the Higher National Conservatory for Music of Paris, he obtains, in 1975, a First prize of organ in the class of Rolande Falcinelli. With Gaston Litaize, he pursues this course during several years with whom he deepens the interpretation of the repertory of the 18th century in our days. Finally, from 1972, he is has the opportunity to frequent the famous courses of improvisation which gave Pierre Cochereau to the International Academy of Nice. He wins the Prize of Improvisation in the international competition of Lyon in 1977.
Maurice Clerc is Emeritus organist of the cathédral in Dijon after being the titular organist of this great instrument for 46 years from 1972 to 2018. He was also a professor to the Conservatory of Dijon and lecturer at the University. Maurice Clerc recorded a dozen CD among which Bach and German baroque masters. But having built up itself a reputation in the romantic and modern repertory and considered one of the specialists of the French music, he became attached to the promotion of the major works of Franck, Vierne, Dupré, Fleury, Langlais. His most recent recordings led him to present Cochereau and French transcriptions.
Maurice’s Program
About Our 2010 Klais Organ – Opus 1881 III/41 Ranks Tracker Pipe Organ
Orgelbau Klais is a German firm that designs, builds and restores pipe organs. It is a family run company, founded in 1882 by Johannes Klais senior and is now run by his greatgrandson Philipp Klais. The firm is based in Bonn, Germany, and has completed many large-scale building and restoration projects around the globe in more than a century of organ building Johannes Klais studied organ building in Alsace, Switzerland and Southern Germany. He founded his own organ building workshop in Bonn in 1882. His way of building organs was closely bound up with traditional construction methods using slider wind chests. But as early as before the turn of the century he built high pressure stops with two mouths on pneumatic cone valve chests. In 1906, together with his son Hans, he introduced electric action. Hans Klais took over in 1925. In his time facade design began to come under the influence of the modern age and ergonomic console designs were also being developed. Hans Gerd Klais, the founder’s grandson, took charge in 1965. Philipp Klais, the great-grandson of the founder, studied organ building in Alsace, France; in Germany and overseas. He now runs the company.
Read more about the First Church Congregational Fairfield Klais Tracker Opus 1881 36-stop, 41-rank, 3-manual, tracker pipe organ at First Church Congregational Fairfield; Built 2010 here.