Jeremy Filsell - The Music of Calvin Hampton (1938-1984) (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/192]

The music of Calvin Hampton is idiosyncratic, controversial even, for this is a man who thought nothing of overlaying his midnight organ recitals with a rock band (the audience encouraged to lie on the floor the better to be immersed in the experience). Jeremy Filsell and his venerable choir invite us to share the love. Sitting down is fine.

Calvin Hampton’s creative voice was an immensely important one within the New York musical world of the 1960s and 70s. His reputation spread much wider, of course, yet it was in New York, and a specific corner of the city-which-never-sleeps in which he found his own bohemia; a unique social and musical personal laboratory. A virtually exact contemporary of Gerre Hancock uptown at Saint Thomas, it is perhaps fitting that we are able to honor Hampton’s musical significance here in his adopted city. Appointed Organist and Choirmaster for the Parish of Calvary, Holy Communion and St George’s Episcopal Church in Gramercy Park in 1963, it was here where Hampton instituted and hosted between 1972 and 1982 what became hugely popular midnight (mainly) organ concerts every Friday. These formed a mix of musical offerings which, early on, included appearances of his own rock band, Sevenfold Gift. He encouraged his audiences to lie on the floor, confronting and delighting them, sometimes with experimental lighting, but always with an eclectic musical mix which ranged from soaring Bach to his own often audacious music.

Hampton’s idiosyncratic, and often controversial, ideas on organ tonal design led, over a twenty-year period, to a transformation of the organ at Calvary, an instrument originally constructed by Roosevelt in 1887 but entirely re-ordered in 1936 by G Donald Harrison of Aeolian-Skinner. There were pipes in the instrument made by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, imported by Hampton himself from Paris (the Cavaillé-Coll orchestral oboe remains part of the instrument, yet the organ today sadly suffers from neglect). At a time when neo-baroque aesthetics often dominated American builders’ work in both church and concert hall, Hampton remained a continual advocate of a consciously symphonic approach. …

TRACKLIST

1. Jeremy Filsell - Fanfare for the New Year
2. Jeremy Filsell - Most High, Omnipotent, Good Lord
3. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Palm Sunday: I
4. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Palm Sunday: II
5. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Palm Sunday: III
6. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Palm Sunday: IV
7. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Palm Sunday: V
8. Jeremy Filsell - I Wonder as I Wander (Arr. for Choir by Calvin Hampton)
9. Jeremy Filsell - Materna "America the beautiful" (Arr. for Choir by Calvin Hampton)
10. Jeremy Filsell - Prelude on Materna
11. Jeremy Filsell - The Christmas Oratorio (Excerpt: Magnificat)
12. Jeremy Filsell - Concerto for Solo Organ
13. Jeremy Filsell - The Nicene Creed
14. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Pentecost: I
15. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Pentecost: II
16. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Pentecost: III
17. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Pentecost: IV
18. Jeremy Filsell - Cantata for Pentecost: V
19. Jeremy Filsell - At the Lamb’s High Feast
20. Jeremy Filsell - Bread of the World
21. Jeremy Filsell - My country 'tis of thee
22. Jeremy Filsell - Three Pieces for Organ: III. Pageant



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