pixel
Loading Events
  • This event has passed.

A Mighty
Return…

Greg Zelek, Organ

Tues., Oct. 19, 2021
7:30 p.m.

Music Program:

Elgar | ‘Nimrod’ from Enigma Variations
Widor | Organ Symphony No. 6 in G minor

Featuring:
Greg Zelek, Organ

21/22 Overture Concert Organ Season

Charles-Marie Widor’s Sixth Organ Symphony is one of his most famous, and for good reason! This five-movement masterpiece includes two of his most performed movements of all of his symphonies (other than his often played Toccata) and is a work of grand symphonic proportion. Before diving into this tour de force, I open the concert with a transcription of Elgar’s Nimrod from his Enigma Variations in reflection of the challenging past year. – Greg Zelek

Zelek was physically animated throughout the performance. His hands flew across three levels of keyboards while his feet worked the pedalboard like somebody playing Dance Dance Revolution in an arcade.” – Howard Hardee, Wisconsin State Journal

About Greg Zelek

Praised for his “effortless facility on the instrument” (South Florida Classical Review), Greg Zelek is increasingly recognized as one of the most exciting young organists in the American organ scene. Greg has been the Principal Organist of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Curator of the Overture Concert Organ Series since September 2017. Greg holds the Wayne Curtis & Maybelle Slavens Hall and Francis Vincent & Lettie von Kalweit Dunnebacke Curatorship, which is endowed by anonymous friends of the Symphony.
 
In addition to concertizing throughout the United States and with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, Greg regularly performs with orchestras as both a soloist and professional ensemble member. In 2017, he performed with the Florida Orchestra and was the featured guest soloist with the Ridgewood Symphony in 2016. Greg was the organist in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2014 production of Faust. He also performed twice that year with the New World Symphony, including in a performance of Lukas Foss’s Phorion under Michael Tilson Thomas. In 2012, Greg played Strauss’s Alpine Symphony with the MET Orchestra in Carnegie Hall conducted by Semyon Bychkov and performed Poulenc’s Organ Concerto with the Miami Symphony Orchestra in 2011.
 
A recipient of the inaugural Kovner Fellowship, Greg received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, as well as an Artist Diploma, from the Juilliard School. A native of Miami, Florida, Greg was most recently the Music Director and Organist at the Episcopal Church of St. Matthew and St. Timothy in New York City. Greg, who is Cuban-American and a native Spanish speaker, became the Music Director and Organist of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Miami at age 15, and has served as the summer organist for San Pedro Apostol Church in Ramales de la Victoria, Spain.

THANK YOU TO OUR GENEROUS SPONSORS

Gale Meyer
Jane Hamblen and Robert Lemanske
Gerald and Shirley Spade

Greg Zelek is the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Organist and the Elaine and Nicholas Mischler Curator of the Overture Concert Organ.

Details

Date:
10/19/2021
Event Categories:
,

Venue

Overture Center for the Arts
201 State Street
Madison, WI 53703 United States
+ Google Map
Loading...