Performer Biography
Nicholas Good
is active as a harpsichord soloist, continuo player and organist throughout the
Midwest
region. He tours as harpsichordist
on the Kansas Arts on
Tours
rooster presenting concert in local community venues.
In addition to concerts in
Kansas
, recent concerts have included performances of Bach concertos for solo and multiple
harpsichord in
Minnesota
, and a program of Buxtehude?s keyboard
music for the Midwest Historical Keyboard Society at their annual conference in
Iowa City
.
Nicholas Good reports that the first time he played a
harpsichord was when he was 8 years old, and had an opportunity to try pieces that
he had learned for his piano lessons, student minuets by Bach and Handel, on his
uncle?s harpsichord. The annual visits
to his uncle?s house in
Elkhart, Indiana
were always a great adventure where he would be glued to the instrument for as long
as possible. When he was a high school
senior the discovery in a nearby library, of 33 long-playing phonograph records
of Fernando Valenti playing all 555 of the Scarlatti Sonatas,
further whetted his appetite for the instrument. When he entered
the
University of Illinois
as a piano major, he also had opportunity
to study the harpsichord for the first time, with harpsichordist and musicologist
George Hunter. During his college
years he built his first harpsichord from the Zuckerman kits that were then popular. Later when his interest in early music,
and especially in pre-Baroque keyboard music, had increased significantly,
he acquired his first professionally built instrument, and began
studying with Professor Ed Parmentier at the
University of Michigan
. Another significant milestone was his first visit to the instrument exhibition
at the Boston Early Music Festival in 1995.
That was a chance to examine and play instruments by 26 different harpsichord builders
and was where he first met Kevin Fryer who subsequently built the instrument he
uses today as his primary concert instrument.
In 2006 Nicholas released this first solo harpsichord CD, a recording of the keyboard music of Dietrich Buxtehude. This spring
he completed recording sessions for a disc of keyboard music by another important
North German baroque composer, Georg Böhm.
He anticipates release of that CD in the fall of 2009.
In addition to his harpsichord activities, Nicholas is also active as an organist, currently serving as organist at
First
United
Methodist
Church
in
Topeka
. He
is an active member of various musical organization including Early Music
America
, the Midwest Historical Keyboard Society,
the Organ Historical Society and the American Guild of Organists.
He serves on the board of directors of the Sunflower Music Festival, which
present an outstanding series of chamber music and chamber orchestra concerts each
June in Topeka.
In addition to his harpsichord studies
Nicholas completed his music degrees at the Univeristy of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where he studied organ with Paul Pettinga and Harold Balkum and piano with Malcom Bilson, Thomas Baker, William Heiles and Dean Sanders.
