Douglas Cleveland, Organ

Douglas Cleveland has been the Director of Music and Organist at Plymouth Church in Seattle since September of 2004. In September of 2009 he was appointed to the music faculty at the University of Washington School of Music, where he teaches courses in Sacred Music.

He has studied at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, Indiana University and Oxford University. His teachers have included Edward Hansen, Russell Saunders, Larry Smith and Marilyn Keiser. In 1997 Cleveland received a Lilly grant to study advanced choral conducting with David Hill at Winchester Cathedral.

Dr. Cleveland gained international prominence when he won first prize in the 1994 American Guild of Organists National Young Artists Competition in Dallas. Since then he has performed in 48 of the United States and has been invited to perform at such venues as the Victoria Concert Hall in Singapore, Minato Mirai Concert Hall in Yokohama, Japan, Tchaikovsky Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Westminster Abbey, Notre-Dame Cathedral, Lausanne Cathedral and Benaroya Hall in Seattle. He has performed at several music festivals including the Oregon Bach Festival, Festival Vancouver, The Moscow International Organ Festival and the International Organ Festival of Reykjavik, Iceland.

He has also performed with several symphony orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Northwestern University Symphony, and the National Symphony at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

Cleveland has performed with various reputable early music ensembles, including Paul Hilliers’s “Theatre of Voices.” Many of his performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio, the BBC, and the Northwest radio program “The Organ Loft.”

Dr. Cleveland has recorded four critically acclaimed CD’s on the Gothic label. His most recent recording for Gothic entitled “Cleveland in Columbus” features a performance on the marvelous new Paul Fritts organ at St. Joseph Cathedral in Columbus, Ohio.

In 2010 he will be recording a CD at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York and at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

From 1999 to 2004 he was Assistant Professor of Organ at Northwestern University, where he received the Searle Award for Teaching Excellence. He has served as a visiting faculty member at St. Olaf College and the University of Washington in Seattle. He has performed at the American Guild of Organists national conventions of Houston, Dallas and Denver, as well as national conventions of the Organ Historical Society, National Pastoral Musicians and the American Institute of Organbuilders.

Douglas Cleveland was raised in Olympia, Washington and is a sixth generation Washingtonian.

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