Dean Billmeyer

Award-winning organist Dean Billmeyer is in his thirty-sixth year at University Organist and Professor of Music at the University of Minnesota. In this capacity, he teaches classes in Counterpoint, Thoroughbass, and Keyboard Skills, as well as Organ Literature and Pedagogy. Billmeyer has appeared as a recitalist and clinician throughout the United States and Western Europe – his performances have consistently been acclaimed by juries and critics in the U.S. and abroad for their technical prowess and interpretive insight. His numerous awards include prizes in the Dublin International Organ Festival Competitions in 1980 and 1988, and the American Guild of Organists has twice awarded him for the highest scores nationally on the Guild Certification Examinations.

Billmeyer’s recent concerts included a three-city, five-recital tour of Germany in 2016, with performances in Freiberg (Saxony), Leipzig, and Delbrück (Paderborn). These concerts included recitals on noteworthy organs in Freiberg (Silbermann Organs of 1714 at the Cathedral and 1735 at the Petrikirche, and in Leipzig (1904 Sauer organ at the Michaeliskirche). A feature interview in the Freiberg Freie Presse appeared during the tour with the headline “Organist and Gentleman”. His double-CD recording of Bach works as edited by Karl Straube is forthcoming on the Rondeau label in the summer of 2018.

Billmeyer’s teachers include the late David Craighead (Eastman School of Music), the late Robert Anderson (Southern Methodist University), and Michael Radulescu (Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Vienna). He has appeared regularly as an organist, harpsichordist, and pianist over the last eighteen seasons with both the Minnesota Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.