Lynne Davis returns to roster of Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists

Lynne Davis has returned to the roster of Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists after a several-year hiatus. A native of Michigan, she graduated with honors in organ performance from the University of Michigan. She moved to France to study with Marie-Claire Alain, among others. For over thirty years, Lynne Davis made France her home, marrying Chartres International Organ Competition founder, Pierre Firmin-Didot. The couple played a major role in the French organ music scene, initiating among other things the 1992 exhibition and recording of “Les Orgues de Paris.”

Davis’s career was launched by taking first prize at the St. Albans International Organ Competition in England. She has been a featured performer at two AGO national conventions, a member of international organ competition juries, and given concerts, masterclasses, and lectures about French organ literature and its history.

Davis holds the “Certificat d’Aptitude de Professeur d’Orgue” given by the Republic of France and has served as organ professor at the Conservatory of Music in Clamart near Paris and from 1997 to 2006 at the French National Regional Conservatory in Caen in Normandy. In 2006, she was appointed associate professor of organ, holding the Ann & Dennis Ross Endowed Faculty of Distinction chair at the Wichita State University School of Music in Kansas. Her recordings include Musique pour Cathédrales, recorded at Chartres Cathedral, which won the French “5 Diapasons” award; Lynne Davis en Concert on the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Church of St. Etienne in Caen in Normandy; and Lynne Davis at the Marcussen organ in Wiedemann Hall at Wichita State University.

In 2011, Lynne Davis received the Excellence in Creativity Award from Wichita State University. Following the success of the American Alain Festival she organized at Wichita to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jehan Alain, she was awarded as a French citizen the distinction of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in 2012.