YUKO HAYASHI


Suggested Donation $20, $15 OWOS members, $10 Students & Seniors
Old West Church is Handicap accessible

YUKO HAYASHI is an international performing artist. She has concertized widely in the United States, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, and Korea. Through extensive concert tours in western Europe she has researched an authentic approach to historical repertoire of many styles and periods on original instruments constructed during the 14th through the 19th centuries. She has been a guest artist for the Academy of Italian Organ Music in Pistoia, Italy, the North German Organ Academy in Bunde, Germany, at the dedication of the organ at St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna, and at the festival inaugurating the restoration of a Renaissance organ at Salamanca Cathedral in Spain.

Ms. Hayashi is also noted for her interpretation of contemporary music and has performed the world premiers of many new pieces, including Triptych for organ solo by Gunther Schuller, commissioned by the 1976 National Convention of the American Guild of Organists, and Miracles for flute and organ by Daniel Pinkham.

She was invited to join the faculty of the Organ Department of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1960. As chair for 30 years, from 1971 to 2001, she attracted some of America’s most gifted young organists as students as well as those from Europe and Japan. In 2006 she was presented with NEC’s Outstanding Alumni Award in recognition of her distinguished career. Yuko Hayashi is active in promoting a growing interest in the organ and its music in her native Japan. She has given dedicatory recitals on new organs including those at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Ferris Hall in Yokohama, International Christian University Chapel in Tokyo, and Salamanca Hall in Gifu. She has performed as soloist with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, NHK Radio Philharmonic, NHK Television, Nippon Television, and the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra, among many other appearances in her native land.

In 1995, in recognition of her distinguished contributions to the world of music, she was chose winner of the Arion Award by the Cambridge Society of Early Music. She is Executive/Artistic Director of Boston’s Old West Organ Society, an organization which sponsors performances by international artists on the extraordinary 1971 C. B. Fisk organ at historical Old West Church, United Methodist. She also serves as the Music Director of Old West Church, a position to which she was appointed in 1974. Her CD recording, Bach at Old West, is on the Classical Masters label. In 1989 she was appointed Titular Organist of the Chapel of St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo, a position she continues to hold.

After retiring from the New England Conservatory in 2001 Yuko Hayashi has been very active in giving organ recitals and masterclasses throughout the world. Recently she was chair of the jury for the Tokyo Musashino-City’s 6th International Organ competition which was held in September 2008. Because of their similar musical ideals and methods of teaching, she has recently participated as co-artist faculty with Jon Gillock in the Boston Organ Academy, which is sponsored by the Old West Organ Society.

Old West Organ Society
Old West Church
131 Cambridge Street
Boston, MA 02114