Eric Lebrun

Eric Lebrun joined RAMA as Honorary Professor in November 2016

The French organist and organ professor Eric Lebrun was appointed as an Honorary Professor at RAMA in continuation of the opening concert on 10 November 2016 at the Aarhus Symphonic Organ Festival.

Lebrun is educated at the Conservatoire in Paris and has been a prizewinner in several international competitions in organ playing, chamber music and composition; for example, he has a 1er Prix from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris. In 1990 he became organist at the church of Saint Antoine des Quinze-Vingts in Paris, which has a Cavalillé-Coll instrument, and there he has recorded all the organ works of Jehan Alain, Maurice Duruflé and César Franck.

Eric Lebrun has a duo with the organist Marie-Ange Leurent and has also performed as a soloist with various orchestras, including the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra in 2012. He has composed around 50 works, from solo violin to oratorios, and he has written biographies of e.g. Buxtehude and César Frank and about J.S. Bach, all of whose works he is in the process of recording on 20 CDs together with Marie-Ange Leurent.

Lebrun is professor of organ at the Conservatory of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés near Paris and regularly gives masterclasses at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the conservatories of Bologna, Piacenza and Zwolle. He has also held several successful masterclasses at RAMA, and he is generally a very popular teacher.

Important Paris connection

In connection with the appointment, organ professor at RAMA, Ulrik Spang-Hanssen, says:

“One of the key points in the history of music within the history of the organ is absolutely in Paris in the 1930s. Several traditions met there, and there the great French organ tradition reached a peak through the simultaneous presence of most of the great French organists/composers: Charles-Marie Widor, Marcel Dupré, Jehan Alain, Maurice Duruflé, Gaston Litaize and many more.
It was a period which has now become legendary, and which finally ended with the death of several of those involved in the 90s. It is an era that our students would very much like to learn about, which is why it is natural to connect one of the heirs in the first instance to RAMA as Honorary Professor. One name in particular stands out: Eric Lebrun. Like myself, he is a student of Gaston Litaize, he is his successor as professor at the Conservatoire de St-Maur-des-Fossées and is both an internationally recognized concert organist at the highest level and also a composer. Thus he unites in his person several of the tendencies from the legendary time in Paris: the virtuoso, the compositional and the improvisatory. It is with pride that RAMA now presents him as its new Honorary Professor of organ.”