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Don Thompson is one of the very
few concert organists who can genuinely claim to be
internationally known. He has appeared in over twenty countries
in concert and vaudeville and on radio, television and
recordings. He is also one of the handful who are equally at home
playing the classics as well as theatre organ music.
Dons interest in the theatre
organ began when he was very young, when he was taken to hear
Reginald Dixon play at the famous Tower Ballroom. He immediately
decided, at that tender age, that he wanted to be an organist
also. He bought a piano when he was seven and began to teach
himself the organ at his local church when he was about 15. He
was appointed assistant organist at Kentmere Church in the Lake
District when he was sixteen and soon after moved to the large
Stricklandgate Methodist Church in Kendal, his home town. At 18
he performed his first few concerts, in Germany, at churches in
Bingen, Bonn, Idar Oberstein and Bad Kreutznach. Also at 18 he
was appointed organist and director of the choir at his college
in Cambridge. At 19 he played several concerts in Sweden.
After
obtaining his degree at Cambridge he moved on to Oxford, where he
also obtained a degree, but the day after he left the University
he started work as organist at the Trocadero Ballroom in Derby
(to the great disappointment of his parents, who for the next
thirty years would ask him "When are you going to get a
job?") The Derby job didnt last long because Don was
almost immediately invited to be resident organist for the
duration of the Brussels Worlds Fair.
On his return to
England he soon became well known as one of the North of
Englands leading entertainers, playing for summer seasons
in Morecambe and Blackpool and appearing in ballrooms and
nightclubs all over the North. Eventually, tiring of the bleak
North Eastern winters and the high rate of income tax in England
at the time, he accepted an offer to play at the Byblos Theatre,
Beirut, one of the largest theatres in the Middle East. He
remained there for a year (spending most of his time on the
beach) but, being alarmed at the political situation brewing
there, he decided to move on again and finally arrived in Los
Angeles. Since then he has enjoyed a continual rise to national
prominence as a result of his exciting concert appearances
throughout the nation.
In addition to his concert
activities, Don Thompson was a pioneer of the
pipe-organ-in-the-pizza-parlor concept and was on the staff of
the Cap'n's Galley chain in the San Francisco Bay Area, Organ
Power in San Diego, Melody Inn in Los Altos, the Organ Grinder
chain in Canada and Ye Olde Pizza Joynt in Hayward, playing for
the pizza crowds for five nights a week for more than twenty
years.
He also made a point of doing as
many concerts as he could fit into his schedule during the year,
playing mostly on the East coast of the US. In 1987 he made his
first appearance down under and enjoyed it so much that he
decided he would concentrate on playing his concerts there for
the next few years and in fact has concertized almost exclusively
in Australia and New Zealand since then, apart from his regular visits to
upstate New York. Don has now effectively retired from the theatre organ concert
field.
Don Thompson has recorded many LP
albums, cassettes and compact disks, over fifty in all. Many are
still available. His most recent recordings include a CD and
cassette of dance music, two cassettes of concert programmes
recorded on the Capri Theatre Wurlitzer in Adelaide and a
cassette of famous French Toccatas recorded on the organs in
Paris for which the music was originally written. Don was also
resident organist at the beautiful Star of the Sea Chapel on
Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay for nine
years, and for seven years he was organist and Director of Music
at the huge St Roberts church just outside San Francisco.
Don now lives in the Palm Springs area.
Dons life has now come full
circle. His first exposure to the theatre organ was in Blackpool
Tower Ballroom and he spent all his formative years listening to
Reginald Dixon there. A recent concert tour took him back to the
Tower again and he had the extremely nostalgic experience of
playing the Wurlitzer in concert, almost a lifetime after he
first heard it.
Don's first concert was performed in the German
Rhineland and he returned to the same area 52 years later to perform again in
September 2004.
Among the many places where Don
has been honored to appear in concert are:
The Odeon, Leicester Square,
London The Palace, Broadway, New York Radio City Music Hall,
New York The Paramount, Brooklyn, N.Y. The Auditorium Theatre,
Rochester, N.Y. (many times) The Empire State , Syracuse, N.Y.
(many times) The Roberson Center, Binghamton, N.Y. The
Riviera, N. Tonawanda, N.Y. (twenty times) Proctors Theatre, Schenectady
(several times) Chaminade Auditorium, Mineola, N.Y The Hoosier Auditorium,
Whiting, Indiana The Casa Loma, Toronto, Canada (several times) Pearson Auditorium, Roswell, New Mexico Thomaston Opera House,
Connecticut (several times) Hammond Castle, Gloucester, Mass The Virginia Theatre, Alexandria, VA The Mosque Theatre,
Richmond, VA The Avenue Theatre, San Francisco, CA (many times) Old Town Music Hall, El Segundo, CA (many times) The Wiltern
Theatre, Los Angeles, CA The Fox Theatre, San Diego, CA The
Civic Auditorium, San Gabriel, CA (several times) The Civic Auditorium, San
Jose, CA The Auditorium, Lackawanna, N.Y. The
War Memorial Auditorium, Trenton, N.J. (several times) The
Senate Theatre, Detroit (many times) The Castro Theatre, San
Francisco, CA (many times) The Paramount Theatre, Oakland, CA (a long spell as resident organist)
The Hollywood Theatre,
Auckland, New Zealand (several times) The Baycourt Theatre,
Tauranga, New Zealand (several times) Concert Hall, Christchurch, New Zealand The Southward Theatre, Paraparaumu,
Wellington, New Zealand (several times) Moorabbin Town Hall, Melbourne,
Australia (several times) Wilson residence, Warragul, Australia (several
times) Auditorium, Bendigo, Australia (several times);  Marrickville Town Hall,
Sydney, Australia The Capri Theatre, Adelaide, Australia
(several times) The Byblos Theatre, Beirut, Lebanon (resident
organist) and other halls in Perth, Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane
and Bendigo in Australia, Honolulu, Brussels and Ostende and on
many cruise ships.
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