J. Owen Burdick, internationally active composer and conductor, served as the seventeenth organist and director of music at Trinity Church, Wall Street from 1990 to 2008. The late Michael P Hammond, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, has hailed Owen Burdick as “an extraordinary artist with maturity, technical ability, and musical sense well beyond his years?a unique individual who is able to combine musical excellence and historically informed tradition with the pursuit of cutting-edge innovation.” Burdick became the seventeenth Organist and Director of Music of historic Trinity Church, Broadway at Wall Street, in the City of New York in September of 1990. Recognized as a leading expert in the use of electronic music in the church, Burdick is in international demand as a conductor, composer, and clinician. Past conferences have included lectures, workshops, and performances for the Oregon Bach Festival, the Association of Anglican Musicians, the American Guild of Organists, the Mississippi Conference on Church Music and Liturgy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 92nd Street Y, Louisiana State University, and the Association of Diocesan Liturgy and Music Committees. He recently completed six years of service on the Standing Liturgical and Music Commission of the Episcopal Church. Burdick’s 1988 oratorio, Paschal Triptych: A King Portrait, was nominated for an EMMY award and has been broadcast nationally over the ODYSSEY cable network. He has been commissioned to write music for three General Conventions of the Episcopal
Church; his setting of
Psalm 15 was premiered in the Hoosier Dome before 6,500 congregants in 1994. Burdick’s
Jacob’s Prayer, premiered by the men & boys Choir of St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, was one of the major commissioned works of the 2002 American Guild of Organists convention in Philadelphia. Under Burdick’s direction, the Trinity Choir, comprising twenty-two of New York’s finest professional singers, has established itself as one of the city’s preeminent vocal ensembles. In the spring of 1997 the Trinity Choir made a tour of France where they combined forces with the Conservatory Orchestra of Reims in presenting Burdick’s oratorio
And Death Shall Have No Dominion in performances at both the Conservatory and the American Cathedral in Paris. While in Paris, the Trinity Choir also presented an a cappella program of Sacred Music as part of the prestigious Les Grands Concerts Sacrés series. The choir has recorded Handel’s
Messiah which, since its release to critical acclaim in the fall of 1999 on the Naxos label, has sold over 15,000 copies. Their 2001 release, Christmas from Trinity CD for Naxos, has been a top-selling Christmas CD in New York. In 1995, Burdick and the Trinity Choir presented the New York premiere of Dominick Argento’s
The Masque of Angels, and William Albright’s oratorio
A Song to David in what the late composer called the work’s “finest, most accurate, and moving performance.” The choir has over the past ten years performed J.S. Bach’s
St John Passion, St Matthew Passion, Magnificat, and
Mass in B-Minor, all for the first time in the three-hundred year history of Trinity Church. Burdick and the Trinity Choir are presently recording the complete sacred music of two very different composers: Charles Ives for the American Classics series on Naxos and, with the REBEL Baroque Orchestra, Joseph Haydn for the Hänssler Classics label in commemoration of the bicentenery of the composer’s death in 2009.
In December 2001, WQXR-FM, the classical station of The New York Times, agreed to entirely underwrite and broadcast a performance of Handel’s Messiah from Trinity Church to insure the continuation of this annual tradition. Trinity Church is located just 600 yards from Ground Zero. Millions around the world heard this unprecedented event which was broadcast live nationally and internationally on the web. Portions of the performance appeared on CBS’s 60 Minutes with Dan Rather. Since then, in partnership with Trinity Church, WQXR has partially underwritten and produced five live broadcasts with the Trinity Choir.
Burdick received a Ph.D. in music composition, with an emphasis in electronic music, from UCLA, and holds the Associate and Choirmaster Certificates from the American Guild of Organists. A graduate of SUNY, Purchase and the Juilliard School (where his principal teachers included Albert Fuller, Anthony Newman, and Igor Kipnis), Burdick made his New York debut in 1978 at Carnegie Recital Hall. He has studied as a conducting fellow with Helmuth Rilling, at IRCAM with Pierre Boulez, and has appeared as harpsichord soloist in the Casals and Oregon Bach Festivals. Burdick has toured internationally with the Musical Offering Baroque Ensemble with whom he has accompanied Maurice André, the late Arleen Auger and Henryk Szeryng. Burdick has recorded for the Naxos, Hänssler Classics, Nonesuch, Summit, Gothic, and Centaur labels and is represented by CCS International.
