Amsterdam Organ Summer

The Amsterdam Organ Summer is a successful summer concert series of weekly organ concerts, founded in 2001 by music director and Basilica organist Michael Hedley. Although the organ in the Basilica was built according to the ideas of the Romantic era and naturally lends itself to music from that stylistic period, the organists also play organ music from other centuries, so that an organ concert can feature anything from Bach to Piazzolla. The great Romantics such as Brahms, Liszt, Schumann, and Franck, who are well known to the musical public, are joined by specific "organ virtuosos" such as Widor, Vierne, Rheinberger, and Reger.

Organists from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and America with an affinity for this type of organ are happy to accept the invitation from Muziek in de Nicolaas to perform music of their own preference on a top-tier instrument. This is what makes this concert series so diverse and inspiring. There has been a summer focused specifically on young talent, a summer with foreign alumni of the Amsterdam Conservatory, and a summer with exclusively Dutch organists.

The pandemic forced the organization to a standstill in 2020, and that same year Michael Hedley passed away. In 2021 we were able to put together a small version of the concert series with the new music director, Dr. Giles Brightwell. In 2022 the organists came to Amsterdam to contribute to a special series in memory of Michael Hedley (1951–2020). In 2023 organists from the Netherlands and abroad charmed the audience with the beautiful sounds of the Sauer organ. Since 2024 we have reserved one evening especially for young talent.

In 2026 we welcome the following organists to Amsterdam every Wednesday evening in July and August:

Practical information

Concerts take place on Wednesday evenings in the summer months of July and August and start at 8:15 PM, with doors opening at 7:45 PM.

An overview of all the musical events, including the music to be performed, can be found here.