About Director Kevin Birch

Kevin Birch, organist 2016 (2)Kevin Birch, DMA began organ studies with Yuko Hayashi on the C. B. Fisk organ at Old West Church in 1979 and earned the Bachelor of Music Degree at New England Conservatory (with Distinction in Performance) in 1987.  He continued studies with Klaas Bolt at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam and later with Delores Bruch at the University of Iowa where he earned the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees.

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 – www.hookopus288.org – 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 is a member of the music faculty at the University of Maine’s School of the Performing Arts in Orono.

Kevin Birch has performed throughout the United States, Europe and in South America. Recent highlights include concerts at the 2007 and 2009 International Organ Festivals in Berlin, the Meisterkonzert Series at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche in Berlin, the dedication concert for a new Metzler organ in Auenstein, Switzerland and programs for several national conventions of the Organ Historical Society.

He can be heard on OHS recordings Historic Organs of Connecticut, Historic Organs of Boston and Historic Organs of Seattle, and Exsultate – Sacred Choral and Organ Music, recorded at St. John’s in Bangor.