Equally at home in jazz as well as classical music, and an improviser noted for his inventive panache, Wayne Marshall enjoys a versatile career as conductor, organist and pianist. Like composer William Walton before him, Marshall was born in Oldham, Lancashire, in 1961; and ahead of studies in London and Vienna, attended Manchester’s specialist music school, Chetham’s, where he discovered a passion for the music of George Gershwin. For Marshall, whether directing Rhapsody in Blue from the piano or conducting Porgy and Bess in opera houses around the world, Gershwin has become something of a calling card. But he is a tireless advocate for American music more generally: Marshall masterminded the European premiere of John Harbison’s opera The Great Gatsby in 2015, and has conducted Leonard Bernstein’s Candide (as well as Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny) for the Staatsoper Berlin. Among many appearances across the 2018 Bernstein centenary celebrations, Marshall conducted the Mass in Paris; and has championed “Lennie’s” chamber music on disc. Sometime Chief Conductor of the WDR Funkhausorchester, Cologne, he juggles a busy international conducting schedule, but remains, nonetheless, a virtuoso concert organist. In 2004, he inaugurated the organ of Walt Disney Hall San Francisco, subsequently giving the premiere of James MacMillan’s organ concerto A Scotch Bestiary and the Scottish composer’s Second Piano Concerto.