Did You Know? A Glance at Isabelle Demers, Organ Recital

A native of Québec, Demers headed south when she attended the Juilliard School of Music as a doctoral grad student. Before going back to her hometown, Demers moved to Texas where she served as Head of the Organ Program at Baylor University. Now, Demers continues to teach aspiring musicians as an Associate Professor of Organ at McGill University in Montréal, Québec.

The hype to hear Demers live on the organ is real and compels her colleagues to repeatedly request her performances at regional and national conventions. The American Guild of Organists alone invited her to Minneapolis (2008), Washington D.C. (2010), Hartford (2013), Austin (2013), Indianapolis (2015), and Houston (2016).

Across the world, Demers has performed at the grandest of settings including the ElbPhilharmonie (Hamburg), Westminster Cathedral (London), the Royal Festival Hall (London), the Royal Opera House Muscat (Oman), Melbourne Town Hall (Australia), and Auckland Town Hall (New Zealand)—not to mention halls throughout Canada and the United States.

Isabelle Demers captures the beauty of music in dance by including her own transcription for organ based on Stravinky's The Firebird Suite in her recital—one of many such transcriptions she had done throughout her career. This suite is a ballet and orchestra score created by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was his first career success. The ballet tells the Russian tale of a spirit whose feathers convey beauty and protection upon the earth.

Northrop’s Aeolian-Skinner Opus 892 Pipe Organ was built between 1932 and 1936, making it one of the last remaining concert-hall pipe organs in the United States. The organ is approximately 40 feet tall with nearly 7,000 pipes. It is the third-largest auditorium-based Aeolian-Skinner extant in the U.S. and one of the finest examples of a late-Romantic-era instrument.