Patrick Ayrton, harpsichordist, organist & conductor
Patrick Ayrton divides his time between performance on a variety of keyboards - piano, organ, harpsichord, harmonium, computer - and his work as a conductor. He was born in London in 1961, and spent his childhood in the Suisse Romande where he began his musical studies with the blind organist François Demierre. Demierre himself studied at Paris under Marcel Dupré who was in turn a pupil of Widor at Brussels. Before Widor there is a verifiable and direct line of teachers stretching back (through N. Lemmens of Breslau, A. F. Hesse of Darmstadt, and C. H. Rink of Erfurt) to J. C. Kittel, who was a pupil of J. S. Bach himself at Leipzig.
Patrick later studied organ and sacred music at the Vienna Academy, where he worked with the organist and composer Alfred Mitterhofer. After this he enrolled in Ton Koopman’s harpsichord class at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. He was a laureate of the Organ Competitions at Innsbruck in 1983, and at Bruges in 1985.
Patrick Ayrton teaches harpsichord, thorough-bass, and chamber music at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. He has given courses in performance at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, at the Gnessin School of Music in Moscow, at the Yonsei University of Seoul, and at the summer school of the Salzburg Mozarteum. In 1995 he played the title rôle in Anne Cuneo’s documentary film ‘Francis Tregian, Gentleman and Musician’.
Patrick works regularly with the harpsichordist Wolfgang Glüxam, performing pieces for four hands. Other frequent collaborators include the singer Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, the violinists Muriel Cantoreggi and Gordan Nikolitch, the recorder player Han Tol (with whom he was a constituent member of the Trio La Dada 1989-1999), the flautist Alexis Kossenko, and the oboist David Walter. His association and collaboration with Arie van Beek have encouraged him to explore and develop his skills as a conductor.
Many organizations have invited him to lead projects, including the Orchestra of Chalon-Bourgogne, the Orchestra of the Auvergne, the Chamber Academy of Potsdam, the Dijon Opera Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Munich.
In 2004 Patrick’s
researches brought to light important new evidence linking
the composer Joseph Touchemoulin (1727-1801) with the
town of Chalon-sur-Saône, France, and he is currently
engaged in cataloguing and recording this
composer’s works. It is anticipated that an
edition of these works will shortly be published under
the direction of the German musicologist Christoph Meixner.
Patrick is also the founder of the ensemble Les Inventions
and of the association Ars
Burgundiae.
