Western Early Keyboard Association

Kevin Birch takes us on an intimate journey of musical discovery with 17th and 18th century keyboard works including the domestic keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach and his sons, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,  preceded by works of earlier composers that influenced J.S. Bach,  Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Krieger,  and one of the later composers who had deep admiration for C.P.E. Bach,  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Kevin Birch holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree (Organ Pedagogy and Performance) from the University of Iowa, with previous studies at New England Conservatory in Boston and the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam.  His teachers include Yuko Hayashi, Delores Bruch, and Klaas Bolt. Since 1992, he has served as Director of Music at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, Maine where, in addition to choir training and service playing, he directs the St. John’s Organ Society, an organization dedicated to the preservation and stewardship of E. & G. G. Hook’s Opus 288 built for St. John's Church in 1860.  He has performed solo recitals in the US, Canada, Europe, and in South America, and for several national conventions of the Organ Historical Society.  He is especially devoted to the many fine historic organs in Maine on which he enjoys frequent opportunities to study and perform. Kevin is also devoted to the art of the clavichord - an instrument long associated with the organ, especially in Germany and Scandinavia. Recent projects include solo clavichord recitals for the German Clavichord Society in Cologne, Germany, the Boston Clavichord Society, lectures/recitals on “The Clavichord and the Organ - Companions for Centuries” at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY,  and at Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, OH.