David Kinsela is an Australian
organistAn organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
and musicologist who also specialises in ancient instruments like the clavicytherium and chekker.
Kinsela was born in
Sans SouciSans Souci is a southern Sydney suburb in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Sans Souci is 17 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district and lies across the local government areas of the City of Rockdale and the Municipality of Kogarah. It is part of the St George area.Sans...
, a suburb in
SydneySydney is the largest city in Australia, and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney has a metropolitan area population of approximately 4.34 million and an area of approximately 12,000 square kilometres. Its inhabitants are called Sydneysiders, and Sydney is often called "the Harbour City"...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...
, on 3 June 1941 and raised and schooled at Young in mid-west
New South WalesNew South Wales is Australia's most populous state, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria, south of Queensland and east of South Australia...
.
As a fourteen-year-old he had a decisive encounter at the pipe organ with J.S. Bach. He trained in Sydney in English and French schools under Kenneth Long and Norman Johnston and during those early years in Australia he played the
PoulencFrancis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les Six. He composed music in all major genres, including art song, chamber music, oratorio, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
Concerto in
Sydney Town HallThe Sydney Town Hall is a landmark sandstone building located in the heart of Sydney. It stands opposite the Queen Victoria Building and alongside St Andrew's Cathedral...
on National TV.
David Kinsela is an Australian
organistAn organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
and musicologist who also specialises in ancient instruments like the clavicytherium and chekker.
Kinsela was born in
Sans SouciSans Souci is a southern Sydney suburb in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Sans Souci is 17 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district and lies across the local government areas of the City of Rockdale and the Municipality of Kogarah. It is part of the St George area.Sans...
, a suburb in
SydneySydney is the largest city in Australia, and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney has a metropolitan area population of approximately 4.34 million and an area of approximately 12,000 square kilometres. Its inhabitants are called Sydneysiders, and Sydney is often called "the Harbour City"...
,
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the continental mainland , the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans...
, on 3 June 1941 and raised and schooled at Young in mid-west
New South WalesNew South Wales is Australia's most populous state, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria, south of Queensland and east of South Australia...
.
As a fourteen-year-old he had a decisive encounter at the pipe organ with J.S. Bach. He trained in Sydney in English and French schools under Kenneth Long and Norman Johnston and during those early years in Australia he played the
PoulencFrancis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les Six. He composed music in all major genres, including art song, chamber music, oratorio, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...
Concerto in
Sydney Town HallThe Sydney Town Hall is a landmark sandstone building located in the heart of Sydney. It stands opposite the Queen Victoria Building and alongside St Andrew's Cathedral...
on National TV. Kinsella also qualified in civil and traffic engineering and erected the signs on Australia's first expressway.
Kinsela is currently recording a series of CDs featuring the music of Buxtehude.
Click here to hear a sample.
Middle years in Europe
Kinsela moved to Switzerland in 1967 where he studied for five years at the
Schola Cantorum BasiliensisSchola Cantorum Basiliensis is a music academy and research institution located in Basel, Switzerland, and focusing on early music and historically informed performance....
under Edward Müller. His experiments with 'paired fingering' in ancient manner informed his playing of early keyboard music..
During this time he created a recital series, 'Organ Landscapes of the Seventeenth Century'.
While living in Canberra, Oxford and London David was instrumental in saving fine organs in Australia, England and Wales. He researched keyboard fingering for three years in the British Library, and was a lecturer in keyboard skills at
King's College LondonKing's College London is a British higher education institution and co-founding constituent college of the University of London. Founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, its royal charter is predated, in England, only by those of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge...
.
Later years in Sydney
Kinsela returned to Sydney in 1977 to consolidate discoveries in early performance practice. He established with Greg Young the N.S.W. Heritage Council Pipe Organ Advisory Committee. He published J.S. Bach editions in facsimile and presented two cycles of Bach's organ works. Kinsela is an active promoter of contemporary organ music through commissions and the anthology Organ Australis. In September 1983 gave the first performance of Moya Henderson's work for organ and pre-recorded tape, Sacred Site, marking the 10th anniversary of the opening of the
Sydney Opera HouseThe Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre on Bennelong Point in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, who in 2003 received the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour...
.
With David Evans, he recreated the gold-strung medieval clavicytherium upon which he has recorded the earliest surviving keyboard music.
In 1988 Kinsela identified the nature of the first string-keyboard, the 14th-century chekker
In 1998 David acted as consultant for the restoration of the organ at
St. Peters, East Maitland.
In 2001 he established the taxonomy of early keyboard compass and launched the label
organ.o.