Gary Verkade enjoys an international reputation as organist. His compositions explore personal idioms in the areas of solo, chamber, and electronic music.

Gary Verkade was born in Chicago and studied music, including organ performance, composition, form and analysis, counterpoint and musicology, at Calvin College (Bachelor of Arts Degree, 1976) and the University of Iowa (Master of Fine Arts Degree, 1978; Doctor of Musical Arts Degree, 1987) in the United States and in 1978 he received a Fulbright grant to study at the Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen, Germany (Kuenstlerische Reifepruefung, 1982; Konzertexamen, 1984). Germany was his home for 17 years.

Dr. Verkade has been an influential and sought after interpreter of New Music throughout Europe and the United States since his student days. It is here that he sees his principal area of work in music: to help the composer to bring forth serious work for the organ. In this capacity Verkade functions not only as a performer of an end product, but also as an assistant to the composer who might not know the organ as an instrument capable of contemporary musical expression. He has commissioned works by well-known composers and is interested in music for organ and electronics.

Gary Verkade is the composer of music for organ, electronics, chamber and improvisation ensembles; he is co-founder of the Essen, Germany-based improvisation ensemble SYNTHESE, in which he performs on synthesizers and computer. This aspect of his musical work includes some of the most adventurous and satisfying endeavors of his musical career. As a player of improvised music, music which is created in the moment and for the moment, he has worked together with dancers, photographers and painters on projects which bring the arts together in a manner in which they complement and fructify each other.

Verkade's scholarly activities go beyond the usual seminars. He has published essays and articles on a variety of subjects relating to organ playing, performance practice of old music, and composition. It is his conviction that it is absolutely essential for the performing musician to give informed performances of any given music. In other words, the performer must know how to read the scores of composers of various epochs, an ability without which an intelligent and moving rendering of a piece of music cannot take place. Language evolves, music evolves, and the way music is fixed on the page evolves. The essence of his interpretative work lies here: learning to read the score properly in order to best understand a composer's intentions. In a very real, concrete sense, he is a student in his attitude towards his work. And it is this attitude that he wants to transmit to his own students. Music is an academic discipline, one that requires dedication and intelligence to master. In a day and age in which popular music and its aesthetic of the easy tune (because anyone can sing it), the comfortable (because always recurring) rhythm, and the music video (necessary to watch because the music cannot stand alone), we need people who will champion music which expands our horizons and teaches us that we can deepen our experience instead of deaden it by listening to the continuous repetitiousness that pollutes our airwaves. Our ears, our minds deserve better.

Professor Verkade has been a guest professor/lecturer/performer at universities in Europe and the United States; he was on the music faculty of Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin from 1995 to 2000. He has been on the faculty of the Musikhoegskolan i Piteaa, Sweden since 2000 where he continues to teach, perform, compose, record, improvise, and write about serious music.

Recent Publications

"Joerg Herchets 'komposition 1, 2, und 3 fuer orgel': Analytische Untersuchungen von Gary Verkade" in die toene haben mich geblendet. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag des Dresdner Komponisten Joerg Herchet, ed. Dr. Christoph Sramek. Altenburg: Kamprat-Verlag, 2003, pp. 74-109.

"John Bull: Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la: A Performer's Investigation" in The Diapason, January, 2003 (Part 1), pp. 16-18 and February, 2003 (Part 2), pp. 15-17.

Improvisations for Organ and Saxophone. Gary Verkade, organ and Steve Nelson-Raney, soprano and sopranino saxophones. Grafton, Wisconsin, USA: Penumbra Music, CD 012, 2002.

Untitled: Four compositions by Gary Verkade. Bonn, Germany: Mitra-Schallplatten, CD 16 294, 1999.

Winded: Works for Organ and Tape by, of, and for Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993. St. Paul, Minnesota, USA: innova, CD 524, 1999.