Visiting Artists
Biography
Lynne Davis is a leading international concert organist whose career was launched by taking First Prize at the prestigious St. Albans International Organ Competition in England, and has grown to bring honors such as being a featured artist at the centennial American Guild of Organists national convention in New York. She was also a featured artist at the 2004 national convention of the American Guild of Organists held in Los Angeles and recently appeared on the inaugural series of the new Casavant organ at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City on her 2005 fall tour. This tour also included recitals and lectures in Minnesota, Michigan, and Georgia. In the summer of 2007 she will serve as a member of the jury at the St. Albans International Organ Competition.
Davis is also a noted teacher. She is an associate professor of music at Wichita State University and the only woman and the first American organist to earn the French “Certificat d’Aptitude de Professeur d’Orgue” in 1994. Out of 100 candidates that year, only seventeen applicants obtained this coveted certificate delivered by the French government. Since 1997 she has served as professor of organ at the French National Regional Conservatory in Caen, France. Prior to that, she served as professor of organ at the Conservatory of Music in Clamart, near Paris. One of her students won the Concours National d’Orgue de Chartres in 1996, the highest award in France for Organ. She has a number of students performing professionally and teaching at other conservatories in France. She has served on many international competition juries, lectured about French organ literature and its history and taught master classes in North America and Europe.
After graduating with honors from the University of Michigan where she studied with Robert Clark, she left for France to study with Marie-Claire Alain. While there, she earned a diploma under Jean Langlais at the Schola Cantorum in Paris, then a diploma from the Ecole César Franck under Edouard Souberbielle. Further studies with Maurice and Marie-Madeleine Duruflé as well as other European master organists took place while she fulfilled her duties as Titular Organist at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Clamart, near Paris. Ms. Davis later was appointed titular organist of the 1868 Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Church of St. Pierre in Dreux.
Davis performs extensively and always to enthusiastic critical acclaim both in Europe and North America. Her recordings include discs of the Schulze organ at Armley in England and the famed organ at Chartres Cathedral. She has made a number of broadcast recordings for the BBC in Great Britain and the Bayerischer Rundfunk in Germany and has also been heard on France Musique and Radio Classique in France. Ms. Davis is active as a lecturer, especially in the area of French organ literature and its history as well as the organ and stained glass windows at Chartres Cathedral.
