Edward A. Broms (1966- ) has performed for the past 30 years on a variety of instruments, including piano, pipe organ, Hammond organ, electric bass, upright bass, guitar, percussion, and voice; and as a composer and director. His has performed and recorded an array of styles ranging from the speed metal works of John Zorn to Bulgarian dance music, spanning the globe and the last two thousand years of musical practice. He has performed with an impressive number of equally diverse world-class musicians including Mat Maneri, Chuck Berry, Chris Washburne, Jim Hobbs, Timo Shanko, Cecil Taylor, John Zorn, Eddie Kirkland, Bob Moses, Johnny Reinhard, DJ Fraction of Paris, Nandlal Nayak of India, Peter Krasinski, members of the Boston Pops and BSO, and members of the Count Basie Big Band, to name but a few.
With an unyielding zeal he has mastered the major strains of classical, popular, and jazz music, plus a number of world musics, and fashioned these inspirations into a profoundly unique and devotional voice, whatever the setting. Currently, he is bringing this voice to bear on the Pipe Organ, as well as with several ensembles including the World-Sacred quartet Nagbansi (ACM Records) and The Order of the Artists (multimedia).
He began his career in 1977 with the Grammy-nominated St. Mary’s Boychoir (later The National Boychoir) and studied piano, composition, and conducting with Maestro Brahmachari Keith. He then went on to earn degrees in jazz and contemporary improvisation from Berklee (BM, 1986) where he studied with George Garzone and Whit Brown, and from New England Conservatory (MM, 1989) where he studied with Ran Blake, Bob Moses, and Joe Maneri.
This was followed by a 2 year apprenticeship with composer Harold Seletsky in Brooklyn, NY where he completed the Harmony and Counterpoint sections of the famed Schoenberg pedagogical method.
While in New York he shifted his focus from the bass to the organ, and for the past decade has been pursuing a renewed passion for the pipe organ and liturgical music. Pipe Organ Recitals in the past year have included HarvardUniversity, Trinity Church-Copley, King’s Chapel, and Wesley Methodist Church in Worcester, MA.
Simultaneously he was a musician for Grammy-nominated Blue Man Group in Boston (1998-2005).
This culminated in his appointment as Director of Music and Organist at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul. Boston, MA in 2006. His duties there include directing the 2 resident professional choirs (The Cathedral Scholars, and The Cathedral Gospel Choir) which are featured each Sunday at 730AM on WCRB 99.5, Waltham, MA (also available on the web), and curating the many concerts at the cathedral, including the weekly Wednesday Noontime Recital Series. He also performed the Complete Works of John Coltrane in a monthly jazz series at the cathedral which ended in February 2009. This concert series spanned over 400 jazz compositions. In 2010 he will begin a similar series performing the Complete Works of Duke Ellington arranged for jazz quartet.
Active as a Composer, he was most recently commissioned by Organist Peter Krasinski, for whom he composed Organ Symphony #1, Ainulindale, based on the beautiful creation story of Tolkien’s Silmarillion. A meditation on the creative process, the work runs the continuum between being completely composed to being completely improvised. Both organists performed the hour-long work at its premier in March 2008 in Boston, MA. The recording and accompanying score will be released in Fall 2009 on the Zimbel label and imprint, edited by American composer Carson Cooman.
Active as an author, he has written an Introduction to the Piano (a piano-class text) and Encyclopedia of Polyrhythm. He is currently working on a philosophical treatise entitled “The Book of the Artist”.
