FREDERICK HOHMAN
939 words - updated to November 1, 2002

Organist Frederick Hohman is a unique American organ virtuoso, bringing the pipe organ and its 500 years of music to audiences worldwide through concert performances, radio, recordings and television.

He was born in St. Louis, Missouri to professional musicians specializing in jazz, being trained in both classical and jazz piano and organ with the late Charles Cordeal as his primary instructor. He entered the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music in 1974 as an undergraduate scholarship student in the organ class of David Craighead. Remaining at Eastman, he holds Eastman's Performer's Certificate (organ), Mus.B., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees. He participated in national and international organ competitions from 1976 to 1983. In 1984, he was named First Prize Winner in both the Eighth National Organ-Playing Competition (Mader Foundation, Pasadena, California) and the Arthur Poister Memorial Organ-Playing Competition (American Guild of Organists, Syracuse, New York). He has also appeared as organ soloist with American symphony orchestras in the East and midwest.

Since 1984, Frederick Hohman has appeared as a dedicatory recitalist for new organs by several American builders, as a recitalist for conventions of The Organ Historical Society, The American Guild of Organists and The American Institute of Organbuilders, and as a recitalist and lecture-recitalist for prominent U.S. organ festivals including the San Anselmo Organ Festival and the Redlands Organ Festival, and most recently as an adjudicator for the National Organ-Playing Competition in Fort Wayne, Indiana and as a performer and competition adjudicator for The Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival & Competition/USA. Frederick Hohman has become as popular "regular" on several high-profile organ recital series, with more than a decade of annual summer appearances before the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ (Merrill Auditorium, Portland, Maine), four appearances at Methuen Memorial Music Hall, and three appearances at Charleston, West Virginia's Summer Orgelfest.

Hohman's 1984 doctoral essay, The Art of the Symphonic Organist, and his 1985 recording, Lemare Affair (Pro Organo CD7007) ignited a revival in symphonic literature and organ performance practices. The success of these works led to his recording of more symphonic organ music and transcriptions and to the publication, by Wayne Leupold Editions, of a new organ transcription series bearing his name. In 1992, a critic with The Diapason acclaimed him as "one of the symphonic organ's strongest exponents." Although much of his work centers upon the symphonic organ and Edwin Lemare and the symphonic organ music traditions which began in the 1880s in England and concluded during the 1930s in America, Dr. Hohman's broad repertoire reveals considerable expertise in several areas of organ literature.

From 1973 to 1993, Dr. Hohman served as organist & choirmaster in a number of Protestant churches and taught at the collegiate level while concurrently conducting limited tours. From 1993 through 2001, he divided his professional activities between American touring, recording (both as artist and as producer/engineer) and hosting television programs about organ music. He appears as a featured organist on one or more new recordings or videos issued each year on the Pro Organo and Midnight Pipes labels, and he also travels the American continent producing audio CDs featuring many other organ soloists and choral ensembles. To date, he has produced and engineered over 150 CD recordings, and these CD releases have been widely broadcast in English-speaking countries, winning critics' favor with such journals as The Absolute Sound, Fanfare, The American Organist, The Diapason and Britain's Musical Opinion, The Gramophone and Organists' Review.

Frederick Hohman is also seen on television as both host and organist in a weekly half-hour series about the organ and organists in America, entitled Midnight Pipes. This series, which is comprised of 13 new programs each television season, premiered over several PBS television affiliates in 1998, including those serving Los Angeles, New England and the great plains region. Performance segments from the Midnight Pipes series are seen on the nationally-distributed Classic Arts Showcase (ARTS) cable network.

As a composer, Frederick Hohman has written for SATB choir and organ (both original organ music and organ transcriptions). His choral anthem "Jerusalem, the City," won the Sesquicentennial Anthem Contest for the City of Rochester, New York. One of his anthems was published by Lawson & Gould (G Schirmer). His original organ work, "Comic Variations on Good King Wenseslas," and his organ transcription of Tchaikovsky's complete Nutcracker Suite, Op 71a, are both published by Wayne Leupold Editions and distributed by E. C. Schirmer. He has several other choral works and organ compositions / transcriptions that are currently available only in manuscript; however, some of these are scheduled to appear in print from Zarex Corporation and by Wayne Leupold Editions during 2003.

Dr Hohman believes that organists today must make special efforts to introduce "the King of Instruments" to elementary school children. To this end, in the USA and Australia has introduced a children's concert comprised of several "episodes," all serving to illustrate salient musical aspects of organ sound as well as the basic physics of the pipe organ.

Frederick Hohman has a broad and somewhat unconventional outlook for the future of the organ. This was documented on this issue in great detail in a 2-part in-depth interview with Graeme Rawson in the Sydney Organ Journal (NSW, Australia) during 2001. In short, Hohman believes that the organ field is best served when performing artists, builders and composers utilize as fully as possible the rapid technological developments currently today, to arrive at new tonal textures involving both traditional winded and non-winded voices.

In late 2002, with the appointment of additional producers, engineers and support personnel relative to the ongoing work of the Pro Organo CD label, it has become possible for him to return for another period of intense touring and composing.

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