Tom Winpenny & Johan Hammarström
Biography Tom Winpenny & Johan Hammarström
Tom Winpenny
is Assistant Master of the Music at St Albans Cathedral where his duties include accompanying the daily choral services and directing the acclaimed Cathedral Girls Choir. Previously, he was Sub-Organist at St Paul's Cathedral, and during this time he performed with the Cathedral Choir at the American Guild of Organists National Convention, performed in Mahler's Symphony no. 8 with Valery Gergiev and the LSO, and played for many great state occasions. He has broadcast regularly on BBC Radio and regularly featured on American Public Media's Pipedreams. He is also Musical Director of the London Pro Arte Choir.
He began organ lessons under John Scott Whiteley while a chorister at York Minster, and continued as a Music Scholar at Eton College under Alastair Sampson. After holding the post of Organ Scholar at Worcester Cathedral and then St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, he was for three years Organ Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in music. With the Choir of King's College, he gave concerts in the USA, Hong Kong and throughout Europe, in addition to appearing as their accompanist on CD releases on EMI Classics.
He has taken part in the first performance of works by Judith Weir, Cecilia McDowall, Judith Bingham, Carl Rütti, Jonathan Dove, Paul Mealor, Francis Grier, Alec Roth and Francis Pott. He has studied with Thomas Trotter and Johannes Geffert, and won First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2008 Miami International Organ Competition.
In recent years he has given recitals in Grace Cathedral (San Francisco), Birmingham Town Hall, Salisbury Cathedral, Trinity Cathedral (Phoenix), Hildesheim Cathedral (Germany) and Kristiansand Cathedral (Norway). He has also featured as organ soloist in John Rutter’s Christmas celebration concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and recently performed Francis Pott's monumental organ symphony Christus.
His many solo organ recordings include Olivier Messiaen’s cycles L’Ascension and La Nativité du Seigneur (Naxos), discs of music by Peter Racine Fricker, Malcolm Williamson and John Joubert (Toccata Classics), music by Lennox and Michael Berkeley, John McCabe and Charles Villiers Stanford (Resonus Classics), and music by Judith Bingham (Naxos). His recordings of Messiaen’s Les Corps Glorieux/Messe de la Pentecôte and Livre d'Orgue (Naxos) were each awarded five-star reviews both in Choir and Organ magazine (the magazine's Star Choice for Livre d'Orgue) and in the French journal Diapason.
Johan Hammarström
began his studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm in 1997, graduating with both a master’s degree in church music and postgraduate diploma in organ. His teachers included Torvald Torén and Erik Boström for organ studies, and Stefan Parkman, Per Andersberg and Anders Eby for conducting.
Since the autumn of 2003, Hammarström has worked at Västerås Cathedral where in 2014 he was appointed director of music. He is responsible for the cathedral’s extensive music department and conducts the Cathedral’s Motet Choir. He is also president of the annual Västerås Organ Festival, which he initiated in 2009. An important element in Västerås Cathedral’s music life is commissioning new music, a project that Hammarström established in 2006, and has subsequently been a driving force in developing. So far, it has resulted in 35 commissions by both Swedish and international composers.
Between 2009 and 2012 he held a position as lecturer in choral conducting at the School of Music, Theatre and Art at Örebro University. Since 2013 he has served as a lecturer at the Academy of Music and Opera at Mälardalen University.
