Geoffrey Álvarez - Symphonies and Sundries (Tom Winpenny)

Information

Composer: Geoffrey Álvarez

CD1

1. St Paul's Shipwreck
2. Ave Maria

CD2

1. Citrinitas
2. Transfiguration

Tom Winpenny, organ

Date: 2025

Label: Willowhayne Records

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‘Symphonies & Sundries’ presents the complete solo organ works of Geoffrey Álvarez. The recording spans his earliest piece, Transfiguration, a youthful, energetic work shaped by influences from Messiaen, Ligeti, Schoenberg, and Boulez, first performed in 1980 and later revived by Tom Winpenny during the pandemic. St Paul’s Shipwreck, premiered in 2014, showcases Álvarez’s dramatic, modal language and vivid tonal imagery. Citrinitas explores themes of ageing through contrasting weight and transcendence. The album concludes with Ave Maria, a serene organ arrangement of a Maltese devotional work, inspired by New Guinea flute rituals and interpreted with Winpenny’s characteristic sensitivity.

Geoffrey Álvarez (b. 1961) is a British–Nicaraguan composer, conductor, and writer based in Sunderland. He has recently received three chamber music commissions from FILUM Musikschule in Germany, with two works earning second prize at the 2023 Bundeswettbewerb Jugend musiziert. His Rhapsody in Blue and Yellow for cello and bayan was premiered at a 2025 Ukrainian benefit concert in Hanover. Álvarez’s projects include a radio opera with Maltese playwright Joseph Vella Bondin and a UNESCO-supported recording of Draco. A former protégé of Luciano Berio, he was a prize-winning finalist in the 2006 Tansman Competition. He recently completed La profecía última del rey, a five-opera cycle inspired by Kogi beliefs.

Tom Winpenny is a British organist and choral director, formerly assistant master of the music at St Albans Cathedral and sub-organist at St Paul’s Cathedral, London. A trustee of the Royal College of Organists, he has performed internationally and frequently appeared on BBC Radio and American Public Media’s Pipedreams. A former organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, he twice accompanied A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. His extensive discography includes acclaimed Naxos recordings of works by Elgar, Schumann, Messiaen, Judith Bingham, and Francis Pott, as well as choral albums with the St Albans Cathedral Girls Choir.