Toulouse les Orgues

Toulouse les Orgues, the history of a passion

Xavier Darasse is an internationally famous organist who was born in Toulouse and who devoted his entire career to the instrument.

From 1976 on, he took an interest in getting things moving within the community of organ-music lovers in the city and in making most of Toulouse's heritage in the matter.This coincided with a period where former Mayor, Pierre Baudis, committed in doing the restoration of the many organs in the city and building the one in the former abbey of the Augustins.

In 1995, Jan Willem Jansen and Michel Bouvard wished to pursue the work of X. Darasse by creating an organ festival in Toulouse. The restoration of the Cavaille-Coll organ of the Saint-Sernin Basilica was being completed at the time and Toulouse Town Council offered the two organists an opportunity to create a major event to accompagny its inauguration. The project was started up and the festival was first put on October 1996 with the determined objective of having the general public to discover the outstanding organ heritage of Toulouse and the Midi-Pyrénées region.

The festival has been behind many joint productions of recordings with Radio France (The tempéraments collection) and Hortus Productions, and has already published eleven CDs. Facsimiles of the scores of two major works by Bach have also been edited in partnership with the Zurfluh publishing house.
The association has also developped its activity internationally and proposes now shows for the young public.

Toulouse, pole for European exchange

ECHO

One of the festival's main goals is to affirm its European dimension, encouraging exchanges between Toulouse, its region, and eight other European cities with organs of historical significance.
At the second festival in 1997, a cultural co-operation protocol was signed between Toulouse and eight cities organising organ festivals, with Alkmaar (Netherlands), Innsbruck (Austria), Lisbon (Portugal), Umag (Croatia), Saragossa, (Spain), Treviso (Italy), Freiberg (Germany) and Göteborg (Sweden).
These cities, that are privileged in terms of the number, the quality or long history or authenticity of their organs, have committed themselves to implementing projects at an European level, with the creation of an itinerant international organ competition, joint production of major musical events, organ restorations, and book, music and multimedia publications.

www.echo-organs.org