Friday (May 30) at 9 pm at the Cathedral of San Martino in Lucca, second appointment of the Music in the Cathedral series. The protagonist of the evening will be the German organist Ansgar Schlei, an internationally renowned concert artist and regional Kantor and titular organist of the Cathedral of Wesel. He will perform music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Alexandre Guilmant, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger.
The concert is organized by Flam – Federazione Lucchese delle Associazioni Musicali, in collaboration with the Opera del Duomo art and culture center and has as supporting entities the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca and the municipality of Lucca. Admission is free.
Ansgar Schlei
The organist studied Protestant church music at the University of Music and Theatre in Hannover and graduated with honors in art organ in 2005. To date, he has completed further organ studies with Bine Katrine Bryndorf, Carlo Hommel, Ton Koopman, Michael Radulescu, Reinhold Richter and Harald Vogel. He also studied law at the universities of Göttingen, Hagen and Cologne. After working as a church musician in Hannover, Ansgar Schlei was a temporary organist in the Christ Pavilion at the Expo Hannover World Fair. In 2006, Schlei accepted a call to the Willibrordi Cathedral in Wesel, where he has been working as Kantor ever since. In this role, he is responsible for a training course for part-time church musicians in the Lower Rhine region and organ teacher in the regional church training courses. He is also a member of the state examination board for church music.
Ansgar Schlei is President of the Association for Sacred Music of the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland e.V. In 2022 he was awarded the title of Director of Sacred Music by the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland for his contribution to sacred music. His intensive concert activity takes him regularly throughout Germany and the neighboring countries. Various CD productions and radio and television recordings round off his extensive musical activity.