John Keys Artist Bio

There’s more than 1 artist named as “John Keys”

John Keys was born and educated in Chester. On completion of his schooling, he was assistant organist at Chester Cathedral for 3 years, before becoming an organ scholar at New College, Oxford. There he was taught by Gillian Weir and Nicholas Danby.

After graduating, he studied for 3 years at Geneva Conservatoire with Lionel Rogg, and won the 1er Prix de Virtuosité and the Prix Barblan. He was also Organist of Eglise St Jean and then Holy Trinity Church.

Having been appointed Director of Music at St Mary’s Church, Nottingham, in 1984, in the same year John won First Prize at the 4th Manchester International Organ Competition. As well as having created a flourishing musical tradition at St Mary’s, he is the University Organist at the University of Nottingham, and plays the organ extensively in Britain and abroad, primarily as a solo recitalist, but also as an accompanist and continuo player

John also teaches the organ, up to the highest levels, and acted as tutor for an Oundle / RCO “Get Ahead” day in Nottingham.

John is shown below with Simon Williams, to whom John gave organ lessons throughout Simon’s secondary education. Simon subsequently went on to become an organ scholar at Chelmsford Cathedral, and then an organ scholar, reading music, at Robinson College, Cambridge.

John was the President of the Nottingham & District Society of Organists from July 2005 to July 2007.

In association with the best-selling popular science writer Brian Clegg, John has produced numerous CDs containing hundreds of tracks of music for all church occasions, including organ accompaniments for hymns, voluntaries and Mass settings, as well as piano Worship Song accompaniments. These have received critical acclaim, and are all available from www.hymncds.com

In July/August 2006, John was a tutor at the Organ Summer School at St Andrews University. The other tutors were Herbert Richardson, Dr William Stevenson and Professor George McPhee, shown below.

In August 2006 and 2007 he was asked to take part in the final concert of the Gothenburg International Organ Academy.

In 2009, John was nominated as an Honorary Fellow of the Guild of Church Musicians. He is seen here with the Archbishop of Westminster, in a photograph taken by Professor John Morehen.

John is one of the trustees for the Binns organ in the Albert Hall, Nottingham, and in April 2012 he was nominated as Vice Chair of the committee.
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John Keys is also a collaboration between two artists, Dandy Jack and Adres Garcia, who usually produces different genres of music. Andres is a classical and jazz trained professional musician who has been active in his line of work since 1992, and has various artistic endeavors under his belt, composing for theater and contemporary dance. Dandy Jack, on the other hand, is undoubtedly one of the true unsung heroes of the international techno scene. He has a lot of releases on such renowned labels as Perlon, Orac and Contexterior. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.