Stefan Engels

Stefan Engels is an internationally renowned German organist.

Stefan Engels was appointed Professor of Organ and Leah Fullinwider Centennial Chair in Music Performance at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, in 2014, where he is also head of the Organ Department at the Meadows School of the Arts. This appointment was preceded by his positions as Professor of Organ at the University of Music and Performing Arts “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig, Germany (2005-2015), and as Associate Professor of Organ at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey (1999-2005).

While in Leipzig, Mr. Engels founded the European Organ Academy and served as its Artistic Director. With its international faculty and student body, the Academy gained a reputation as one of the leading organ academies worldwide and received significant grants from the German Academic Exchange Service. Stefan Engels played a significant role in creating and organizing the Leipzig International Competition in Organ Improvisation.

As an advocate, champion and specialist in the music of the late-Romantic German Composer Sigfrid Karg-Elert, he founded the Karg-Elert Festival, demonstrating and discovering the unique organ, piano and chamber music works of this Leipzig composer. In 2016 Mr. Engels will finish the world premiere recording of the complete organ works of Karg-Elert. This recording project has been reviewed to international critical acclaim: “…this series will surely stand as the greatest project the gramophone has achieved in organ music for very many years… 10 fantastic volumes of some of the most creative and complex organ music ever written has been released by Priory in this ground-breaking series of Karg-Elert’s complete organ works - much of it unrecorded… Engels has the measure of both music and instrument - there is much to marvel at here…. Engels is a player of exceptional talent and in his hands Karg-Elert receives as sympathetic an advocacy as one could ever imagine… Stefan Engels’ performance is superlative… Engels delivers interpretations that may never be bettered ... A magnificent disc.”

Stefan Engels maintains a vigorous international concert schedule and is a sought-after teacher, having presented workshops, lectures and master classes in many major cities across the European continent, Iceland, North America, Russia and South Korea. He has been praised for his creative programming including the presentation of significant but lesser-known organ works from a broad spectrum of the organ repertory as well as for his engaging and inspiring teaching.

He regularly serves on juries at the world’s leading organ competitions, such as the St. Albans International Organ Competition in the United Kingdom, The Canadian International Organ Competition in Montreal, The German Music Competition and the International Bach Competition in Leipzig.

Mr. Engels’ broad musical education took place in Germany and the United States. He studied organ, piano, harpsichord, choral conducting and sacred music at the universities in Aachen, Düsseldorf and Cologne. From 1993 until 1998 he pursued further organ studies with the late Robert T. Anderson at SMU in Dallas, TX, and with Wolfgang Rübsam at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Mr. Engels achieved his international breakthrough when he was awarded the “Concerto Gold Medal” at the 1998 Calgary International Organ Competition. Since then he has been represented by Karen McFarlane Artists Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio.