Meet St. John's Music Director

KEVIN BIRCH holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Iowa with previous studies at New England Conservatory in Boston and the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. His teachers include Yuko Hayashi, Delores Bruch, and Klaas Bolt.

Since 1992 he has served as Director of Music at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, Maine where, in addition to choir training and service playing, he directs the St. John’s Organ Society - www.hookopus288.org - an organization dedicated to the preservation and stewardship of E. & G. G. Hook’s Opus 288 built for St. John's Church in 1860. He serves as a member of the Diocesan Liturgical Commission and is a member of the music faculty at the University of Maine’s School of the Performing Arts in Orono.

Kevin has performed throughout the United States, Europe and in South America. Recent highlights include several concert tours in Luxembourg, concerts at International Organ Festivals in Berlin, Germany (2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013), programs on the many fine vintage pipe organs in the Downeast and Midcoast Regions of Maine, and performances at several national conventions of the Organ Historical Society.

He can be heard on OHS recordings Historic Organs of Connecticut, Historic Organs of Boston, Historic Organs of Seattle, Historic Organs of Southeast Massachusetts and Exsultate – Sacred Choral and Organ Music, recorded at St. John’s in Bangor.