Benjamin Saunders

THE AUDIENCE COMES FIRST

I always aim to delight and enthral audiences with a unique mix of classical, jazz, dance and popular music. I've been fortunate to have performed in many countries and made recordings conducting choirs and playing the organ.

Having spent most of my life leading cathedral music in England, it's just as thrilling to share entertaining and varied concerts with new audiences in local village churches. As well as playing the organ, I bring along a classical accordion, a more intimate instrument that is both mesmerising in its complexity and incredibly expressive.

PRESS

University of Notre Dame, Indiana

“Saunders’ extraordinary vision for music extends beyond the cathedral and into the greater community that spans class, race, politics, and gender.”

The Listener

“One of the best organ music recordings I’ve heard so far this year. He, in the UK has an excellent reputation… this album is his debut on the international record market. It is high time, we can only say, as Saunders turns out to be an excellent performer, the phrasing is very good, technically also highly convincing and he possesses that rare gift of a personal and individual touch in organ music.”

NMZ Neuen Musikzeitung

“Benjamin Saunders has an extremely sensitive ear for the different aesthetics of the music.”

Organ – Journal für die Orgel (Schott)

“He gives the music life and is absolutely essential listening, and performs its technical requirements effortlessly.”

Radio France

“Le disque coup de coeur de la semaine.”

Kölner Dom Orgelfeierstunden

“A totally impressive performance… the concert goers were audibly captivated by the exceedingly beautiful and varied use of the Dom organ… showing the great skill of the English concert organist in dealing with large acoustics.”

Stuttgarter Zeitung

“The Organ does not always roar… as the young Englishman produced the many different sounds of a symphony orchestra from the Mühleisen organ in the collegiate church with great taste. Benjamin Saunders, playing in the International Summer Organ Festival gave a programme which moved refreshingly off the well beaten paths of Bach, Mendelssohn and Franck.”

Mississippi Rag

“It [Riff-Raff] was a tour de force of the player’s considerable technique and a rhythmic sense matching any jazzman’s.”

Kaliningradskaya Pravda

You can read an account about Benjamin’s concerts in Kaliningrad.
(Copyright © Rhinegold Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Used by permission.)

Organists Review

"Is there any other British cathedral organist in a rock band? Revolutionary work… the mixture of adventurism and self-discipline brings dividends… that’s why they call him a breath of fresh air.”
You can read a profile of Benjamin by Joe Riley.
(Copyright © Organists Review. All rights reserved. Used by permission.)

Gramophone

“This highly impressive disc benefits particularly from the choir’s understanding of the music’s liturgical context and Benjamin Saunders’s fluid shaping of it. What makes the recording special is the full-throated sound of the choir, featuring both boy and girl trebles, captured in the spacious acoustics of Leeds Cathedral itself.”

Choir and Organ Magazine

“You will be richly rewarded by delving into this fine musical survey. Saunders’s playing is warmly persuasive."

Yorkshire Post

“A thoroughly enjoyable evening of popular fireworks for the organ that all could listen to and enjoy. It is amazing to us non-organist types just how many varieties of sounds he produced from what appears to be a small instrument.”