William Porter

BIOGRAPHY

Widely known as a performer in the United States and in Europe, William Porter has also achieved international recognition for his skill in improvisation in a wide variety of styles, ancient and modern.  He has performed at major international festivals and academies, including the North German Organ Academy, the Italian Academy of Music for the Organ, the Smarano Organ and Clavichord Academy, Organfestival Holland, the Göteborg International Organ Academy, the Dollart Festival, the Lausanne Improvisation Festival, the Festival Toulouse les Orgues, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the McGill International Organ Academy, Eastman’s Improvfest, and the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists.

Professor of Organ, Harpsichord, and Improvisation at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, from 2002 until his retirement in 2013, he has also been a member of the music faculty at McGill University in Montreal, where he lived from 2004 until fall of 2015.  From 1985 to 2002 he taught organ, music history, and music theory at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and from 2001 until 2005 he taught improvisation at Yale University.  Porter holds degrees from Oberlin College, where he also taught organ and harpsichord from 1974 to 1986, and from Yale University.

He has recorded on historic instruments, old and new, for the Gasparo, Proprius, BMG, and Loft labels.  Now residing in Rochester, New York, he has returned to the Eastman School of Music as Adjunct Professor of Organ.