St. Peter's Catholic Church
2700 E. 4th Street
Greenville, North Carolina 27858
Date: September 21, 2008
Time: 2:30 PM
Hector Olivera will play the dedication concert on the recently installed Custom Rodgers Medallion Masterpiece three manual organ. This organ has 10 main audio channels and a custom antiphonal division and MIDI.
Hector Olivera is a passionate, gifted,
and unique musician, whose personal interpretations of both classical
and popular music have amazed and delighted audiences around the world.
Born in Buenos Aires, Hector’s first teacher (who was his father)
encouraged him to begin playing the pipe organ when he was three. Two
years later, Hector was appointed organist of the Church of the
Immaculate Conception. At six, he entered the Buenos Aires Conservatory
to study harmony, counterpoint, and fugue. Beginning to learn the art
of improvisation there, by nine, he had composed a suite for oboe and
string orchestra, which was eventually performed by the Buenos Aires
Symphony Orchestra.
Hector entered the University of Buenos Aires when he was 12, where he
studied with Hector Zeoli and Juan Francisco Giacobbe. By 18, he had
performed more than 300 concerts throughout Latin America, appearing
frequently on Argentinean radio and television. During this time, he
also served for three years as the senior improvisational accompanist
for the Collegium Musicum in Buenos Aires, vastly increasing his
prodigious improvisational talent.
In 1965, New York’s prestigious Juilliard School of Music offered him a
scholarship. He immediately moved to the United States to study with
Vernon de Tar and Bronson Reagan. Three years later, Hector won the
National Improvisation Contest sponsored by the American Guild of
Organists, thereby launching his outstanding professional concert
career.
Besides performing many concerts in the United States and throughout
Mexico and Latin America, Hector has also played in Australia, France,
Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Spain,
Switzerland, and Taiwan. Notable venues have included the Cathedral of
Notre Dame, Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, the Crystal Cathedral,
Spivey Hall, Constitution Hall, Balboa Park, and Dallas’s Myerson
Concert Hall. He was also the featured organist in the 1978, 1980 and
1984 Manchester (UK) International Organ Festival.
In 1988, after years of performing in the United States, Hector was
invited to play again in Argentina. Upon arriving, he was treated like
a national hero with SRO concerts attended by celebrities and heads of
state, as well as featured on many radio television shows.
Hector has also performed as guest soloist with many orchestras
throughout the world, including the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Fort Wayne
Symphony, the Dover-New Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony,
the Cleveland Orchestra, the Amsterdam Baroque Ensemble, the Minnesota
Orchestra, and the Pasadena Symphony. (Composer Robert Vandall
described Hector's performance with the Tuscarawas Philharmonic as "an
opportunity to hear and see greatness.") His collaboration with the
Pasadena Symphony produced a limited Gold CD edition featuring Hector
in the Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3.
In 1992, Hector was featured at the American Guild of Organists
convention at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta performing the world premiere
of a commissioned work written by William Albright. Later, from this
same stage, Hector performed on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home
Companion.” According to Keillor, Hector "literally stopped the show!"
In 1996, again in Atlanta, Hector performed at Spivey Hall in
connection with the Olympic games, receiving many standing ovations and
rave reviews. In 2000, Hector performed a solo memorial concert in New
York City’s St. Paul the Apostle Church as a tribute to his greatest
hero and role model, organist Virgil Fox. He played a second Virgil Fox
Memorial Concert at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, in 2004. Hector was
invited again to perform for the American Guild of Organists National
Convention in 2002, where his transcription of Stravinsky's "Firebird
Suite" spontaneously brought the large audience of peers to their feet.
Again, in 2004, his appearance before the Guild’s National Convention
in Los Angeles was considered an historic triumph by 2,200 cheering
organists, who gave him four standing ovations in 45 minutes.
In addition to performing at concert halls throughout the world and
dedication recitals in churches and symphony halls, Hector consults on
the design of new and refurbished pipe and electronic organs. He
currently works with, and concertizes and gives master classes for,
Roland Organs. Meanwhile, Rodgers Instruments is completing a large
touring organ for his use throughout the world.
Hector continues to thrill audiences with both solo classical
literature and his own orchestral transcriptions, now released on DVD
and more than 20 classical, contemporary, and film score CDs.
Although he is most famous for his prodigious technical proficiency,
Hector’s amazing affect on audiences has made many of the most
sophisticated and demanding organ aficionados claim that Hector Olivera
is one of the greatest organists in the world today.
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