Biography
TIMOTHY TIKKER was born in San Francisco (California, USA) in 1958. He obtained his Bachelor of Music degree, magna cum laude, in Organ Performance at San Francisco State University, and his Master of Music degree in Organ from the University of Oregon at Eugene, where he studied repertoire and improvisation with Guy Bovet. Through a Ruth Lorraine Close Award from the University of Oregon, he studied with Jean Langlais. He has also worked in masterclasses with Xavier Darasse, André Isoir, Daniel Roth (Haarlem Academy, Netherlands) and Ewald Kooiman (Toulouse).
He won First Prize in the National Improvisation Competition in the San Anselmo Organ Festival in 1987 (USA), the Holtkamp-AGO Award in Organ Composition in 1993, First Prize in the UNESP Organ Composition Competition (Brazil) in 1997, and won a Finalist award in the Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Competition in 2000 (USA).
Compositions include Variations sur un vieux Noël for organ (which he has recorded for Raven Recordings), Three Gregorian Sketches for organ (recorded by Christopher Young for Pro Organo Records), Magnificat for choir, harp and organ, Tiento de Batalla sobre el Balletto del Granduca for organ (recorded by Diane Meredith Belcher for JAV Records), as well as works for brass, choir and piano. He has recorded for Arkay, OHS and Raven Records. He has also published numerous articles in various music journals, especially concerning French music and organs.
His active concert career recently featured a performance as soloist with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra (De Falla’s Harpsichord Concerto), Charleston Symphony Orchestra (Copland’s Organ Symphony), and his first improvised accompaniment to a silent film (DeMille’s The King of Kings), the latter two events in the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. He has also published numerous articles in various music journals, especially concerning French music and organs. Called by Jean Langlais “without doubt, in the United States one of the best interpreters of the work of Tournemire,” Tikker performed in the complete rendition of Tournemire’s l’Orgue Mystique at St. Mary’s Basilica in Minneapolis in 1990, wrote an essay on the performance of Tournemire’s organ works for a book published by the University of Michigan in 1996, and gave a lecture on Tournemire’s Symphonie-Choral d’Orgue at the College of London’s Tournemire Symposium in 2001, recently published in the French journal l’Orgue.
From 1996-2000 he was Organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Charleston, South Carolina. He is currently Organist at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and College Organist at Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI.