Peter Watchorn is an Australian-born harpsichordist,聽resident since 1987 in Cambridge, MA. In an international career spanning over forty years, he has combined a virtuosic keyboard technique, extensive musical scholarship and professional practical experience in the design and construction of harpsichords copied from original instruments of the 17th and 18th centuries. As well as presenting many solo public performances and broadcasts of Baroque keyboard music, choral and orchestral music, he has made numerous commercial CD recordings of solo harpsichord music from the 17th and 18th centuries, including, beginning in 1997, the complete harpsichord works of J. S. Bach, including in addition, the set of six sonatas for violin & harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019. He also specializes in the music of 17th-century French and German composers and the works of the English virginalist composers,聽Byrd, Bull, Gibbons and others. He is widely recognized as an expert on the history of the early music revival during the 20th century. With the conductor, Julian聽Wachner, in 1995 at Boston University, he founded and co-directed the Boston Bach Ensemble, an organization devoted to performing (and recording) the choral works of J. S. Bach. His biography of his own teacher, the Viennese harpsichordist Isolde Ahlgrimm (1914鈥�95) was published by Ashgate/Routledge in December 2007, with the German edition (Boelau-Verlag, Wien) appearing in 2017. He is executive producer, president & co-founder of the non-profit CD label, Musica Omnia, producing,聽in addition to his own recordings, over sixty major projects聽of repertoire from the Renaissance through to the works of Boston College colleague聽Ralf Yusuf Gawlick. He has taught at Boston Conservatory (graduate seminars in Mendelssohn, Bach & Monteverdi) and, since 2008, at Boston College where he has presented three specially-developed and uniquely聽integrated courses: a general introduction to Western Music, a detailed Baroque survey course and a third devoted to in-depth examination of the music of J. S. Bach.
