Isabelle Demers Organ Concert

Bach Akademie 2019 Charlotte Bach Festival, Sunday, June 9, 2019 at Myers Park United Methodist Church. Isabelle Demers plays the Myers Park UMC IV/81 Aeolian-Skinner Organ (Opus 1121, 1949 originally III/60) with new console, pipe and digital additions by Angerstein & Associates in 1996.
With playing described as having “bracing virtuosity” (Chicago Classical Review) and being “fearless and extraordinary” (Amarillo-Globe News), Isabelle Demers has enraptured critics, presenters, and audience members around the globe. Her 2010 recital for the International Society of Organbuilders-American Institute of Organbuilders convention “left the entire congress in an atmosphere of ‘Demers fever’”. That same year, her performance at the Washington D.C. national convention of the American Guild of Organists was described as “one of the most outstanding events of the convention” (The American Organist). The standing-room-only audience there called her back to the stage five times.

There is no shortage of organists who make their instruments roar; and while her power was never in question, Demers made the instrument sing.”
– Peter Reed, Classical Source.com, England, 2016

She has appeared worldwide in recital in Europe, Oman, Australia, New Zealand, and coast to coast in the United States and her home country of Canada. Highlights of her 2018-2019 season include performances at the Maison Symphonique (Montreal, Québec), the Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg, Germany), City Hall (Stockholm, Sweden), the Forbidden City Concert Hall (Beijing, China), and Westminster Abbey (London, UK), in addition to numerous other engagements in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Dr. Demers is in continual demand by her fellow colleagues as witnessed by performances for regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Institute of Organ Builders and International Society of Organbuilders, the Royal Canadian College of Organists, and the Organ Historical Society.

Her first recording on the Acis label, The Old and the New, was met with critical acclaim. Fanfare Magazine called it “superbly produced”, a “clear, tightly focused recording”, and a “brilliantly played program.” Her second disc, featuring the organ works of Rachel Laurin, was released in June 2011, and her recording of Max Reger’s Seven Chorale-Fantasias in November 2012. Her fourth CD, Bach, Bull, and Bombardes (Pro Organo), was released in May 2013. In 2018, she appeared as solo organ accompanist in a recording of Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem with the Baylor University Choir, recorded at Duruflé’s church, St. Étienne-du-Mont, in Paris, also on the Acis label.

A native of Québec and a doctoral graduate of the Juilliard School, Dr. Demers is Organ Professor and Head of the Organ Program at Baylor University in Texas.