Paul Fey, a 25-year-old composer and organist from Leipzig, Germany, made his North American debut and performed last Wednesday night at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall.
“He is somebody that has taken traditional organist approach and mixed it with contemporary styles,” said Ashley Haseltine, the executive director of the Methuen Memorial Music Hall. “He is taking classic organ playing to a whole new level.”
Fey’s own rise to fame came during the pandemic. He started his YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@PaulFey, in 2020 so that his grandfather, who could not attend church because of Covid-19, could still hear Fey’s compositions.
The page now has over 20,300 subscribers. Fey said he started to play music and share it because of the “feelings it can communicate” and the way it connects people.
He started playing music, though, in the first grade when he took up classical guitar lessons. A year later he added piano. After studying both for 10 years, he took organ lessons with A.F. Kipping and Stefan Kieling, a former organist at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig.
In addition to his YouTube page, Fey plays organ all over the Leipzig region for workshops and concerts. He has played for services at St. Thomas Church as well as at the newly built Propsteikirche Catholic church.
He studies organ and sacred music full-time at Saale, a specialist university in Halle, and will graduate next year.
Fey started his program last Wednesday night with “Prelude in D-Major, BWV 532,” by J. S. Bach, another Leipzig native. Fey honored other Leipzig composers throughout the night, including “Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden,” an aria the opera Diomedes by Gottfried Heinrich St lzel, who lived in the city for three years. He also performed “Sonata No. 3 in A Major” by Felix Mendelssohn, who was director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and founded the Leipzig Conservatory of Music.
Notably, the world premiere of Fey’s “Fantasie on Simple Gifts” was commissioned for the occasion. Fey turned the famous New England Shaker tune into a 12-minute Neo-Romanticism set. It closed out the concert.
“We are thrilled that he debuted that piece,” Haseltine said. “Our organ is known throughout the world, so it’s a great pairing to have the two.”
Fey will also perform in Pennsylvania, New York, D.C. and North Carolina this month.
Follow Monica on Twitter at @MonicaSager3