Thomas Heywood

Due to travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 virus, Thomas Heywood is unable to travel from Australia to Longwood for his performance on May 1. Therefore we are canceling the performance. Ticket buyers will be contacted with information about receiving a refund.

Internationally acclaimed organ virtuoso Thomas Heywood is celebrated for his unique ability to make the greatest music of all time come alive on the king of instruments. In his Longwood debut after serving on the jury of the 2019 Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition, Heywood performs his own transcription of Beethoven’s complete Symphony No. 5, as well as Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and other thrilling symphonic repertoire. 

Listen to Thomas Heywood

More about Thomas Heywood

Born into a Melbourne musical family in 1974, Heywood gave his first public performance at age five after commencing musical studies at the age of four. He has since performed on thousands of occasions ranging from a celebrated recital in the Sydney Opera House at the age of 17 to the world’s most famous organs from Windsor Castle to the largest pipe organ in New York City. He has traveled more than 750,000 miles or 1.2 million kilometers performing solo concerts on the most celebrated pipe organs across the globe. Heywood has performed Mozart in Vienna, Tchaikovsky in Moscow, Handel in London, and Beethoven in Bonn.

Since 1992 when he released Australia’s best-selling organ recording at only 18 years of age, Heywood has released more than 30 sell-out recordings receiving extraordinary critical acclaim. In 2009, Heywood became the first, and remains the only, concert organist in the world to release three commercial recordings from three continents within seven months. His performances have been broadcast internationally on television and radio.

Heywood has also performed more concerts in Australia than any other organist … more than 1,750 concerts to more than 600,000 people, to date, including a sold-out solo tour of Russia from the Pacific Coast to Moscow in December 2012 and January 2013. Regularly inaugurating new and restored organs since 1993, Heywood has opened many landmark instruments including the largest musical instrument in the southern hemisphere: the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ.

In addition to his work as a concert organist, Heywood is also a talented and prolific transcriber; with an ever-growing repertoire of more than 5,000 works, he has published solo concert organ arrangements of the most famous classical and romantic music that are performed by organists around the world.

Heywood is committed to promoting and preserving Australasia’s unique pipe organ heritage. In 2011 he became the founding president and Australian national director of the Australian and New Zealand College of Organists. As a teacher, he is on staff at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne and is organist and head of chapel music at Haileybury in Melbourne, Australia’s largest school, where he established and directs the Organ Scholars Program.

Find out more on his website.

*Gardens Preferred and Gardens Premium Members receive access to the Pre-sale. If you are eligible, you have received a discount code and Pre-sale access code via direct mail or email from Longwood Gardens.

Coffee Reception

Enjoy a complimentary coffee reception with the artists after this performance.