A Fantasy Through Time - CD/DVD

Our latest release was from this month, and included our very first bonus DVD release. This DVD was included free with the purchase of the full-length audio compact disc recording of Kimberly Marshall! In the video, the audience is treated to an in-depth video interview about the organ and the music on the audio disc. “A Fantasy through Time” traces the history of a unique musical form: the organ “Fantasia”. Her insightful commentary on these fantasies enhances the listening experience of her performances, both on the video and on the CD.

This is also the first commercial recording on the new Richards-Fowkes organ at Pinnacle Presbyterian Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. This instrument was conceived as an eclectic 3-manual organ, with special emphasis on some of the timbres that J.S. Bach would have known on central German organs. It is a visually beautiful instrument with many details which are shown on the bonus DVD.

Called “an extraordinary musician” by Diapason, Marshall’s performances fully exploit the tonal resources of the new instrument. Her program of fantasies starts with the earliest English “Fancys” of the 16th century, includes Baroque examples by Sweelinck and Bach, and also classical and romantic examples by Mozart and Franck, and finally culminating with the exotic Fantaisies of the early 20th-century French composer Jehan Alain. The program is framed with Fantasies by J. S. Bach, showing the different ways in which he exploited the genre.

The wide survey of the fantasy genre recorded here suggests the wealth of invention expressed in the work of European composers for the organ over five centuries. No other instrument can claim such a vast heritage, and very few single organs could render so eclectic a program so convincingly.

Kimberly Marshall maintains an active career as a concert organist, performing in Europe, the US and Asia. Winner of the St. Albans Competition in 1985, she has been invited to play in prestigious venues and has recorded for Radio-France, the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A native of North Carolina, she began her organ studies with John Mueller at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She later studied in France with Louis Robilliard and Xavier Darasse before returning to the US to complete her undergraduate studies with Fenner Douglass.

Kimberly Marshall received the D.Phil. in Music from the University of Oxford and has lectured for the American Musicological Society and the Royal College of Organists. She has contributed entries for the Grove Dictionary of Music 2000, and the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Dr. Marshall currently holds the Patricia and Leonard Goldman Endowed Professorship in Organ at Arizona State University and has recently been appointed Director of the ASU School of Music.