FINAL ROUND

Finalists:

Kirk Rich

Kirk M. Rich

Jonathan Rudy

Jonathan D. Rudy

HyeHyun Sung

HyeHyun Sung

The American Guild of Organists promotes the highest level of organ performance through its National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance (NYACOP). The competition is intended to serve as a springboard for emerging organists to develop their performance ability by participating in various demanding stages. Underwriting of expenses is provided in part by the Nita Akin Competition Fund.

Prizes – First Place: $3,000, the Lilian Murtagh Memorial Prize, funded by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc., plus career development assistance from Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc. and a CD recording on the Pro Organo label; Second Place: $3,000, funded by John-Paul Buzard Pipe Organ Builders; Third Place: $2,000, funded by Kegg Pipe Organ Builders; Audience Prize: $1,000, funded by Martin Ott Pipe Organ Company Inc.

Three finalists perform in the culmination of the AGO’s biennial National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance.

NYACOP, long considered this country’s preeminent organ playing contest, encourages young artists in their pursuit of excellence through participation in its four demanding performance rounds.

The three finalists each perform the following works:

Nikolaus Bruhns: Praeludium in G Major

J. S. Bach: “Schmücke dich, O liebe Seele,” BWV 654

Charles-Marie Widor: II. Moderato cantabile, from Symphony No. 8

Pamela Decker: A new work commissioned for the 2014 Boston AGO Convention

The competition results, determined by a panel of three distinguished jurors, will be announced soon after the performance round concludes.

Those in the audience who hear the entirety of the competition round will be invited to vote for the “Audience Prize,” a $1,000 cash award presented to the competitor who earns the most votes from the assembly.

Mark Miller

Participants will learn captivating new music, by both reading and rote, and have the experience of becoming a community of reconciliation and joy—a choir that sings with transformative power and love.

The gospel choir of the twenty-first century is characterized by compassion and joy, flowing from the singers into the congregation and back again. The theme of the repertoire is Christ Has Broken Down the Wall, Draw the Circle Wide, and All Are Welcome. The choir’s membership is of diverse ages, races, classes, abilities, orientations, and beliefs. This ethos of celebrating all God’s children must be at the heart of the choir experience. A gifted choir director is an expert community organizer who lifts up the gifts of the individual while, at the same time, nurtures the beloved community through the unmatched power of singing as one. In this engaging and fun-filled workshop, participants will not only learn captivating new music, by both reading and rote, but also have the experience of becoming a community of reconciliation and joy—a choir that sings with transformative power and love.

Mark Miller will lead a volunteer group from our convention in a Gospel Choir during Worship Services on Thursday night.

By registering to participate in this choir, you will automatically be enrolled in the Thursday 5:00pm Choir Rehearsal, and will be expected to attend the Worship/Concert pair at Church of the Covenant beginning at 7:30 PM.

Mark Miller

Participants will learn captivating new music, by both reading and rote, and have the experience of becoming a community of reconciliation and joy—a choir that sings with transformative power and love.

 The gospel choir of the twenty-first century is characterized by compassion and joy, flowing from the singers into the congregation and back again. The theme of the repertoire is Christ Has Broken Down the Wall, Draw the Circle Wide, and All Are Welcome. The choir’s membership is of diverse ages, races, classes, abilities, orientations, and beliefs. This ethos of celebrating all God’s children must be at the heart of the choir experience. A gifted choir director is an expert community organizer who lifts up the gifts of the individual while, at the same time, nurtures the beloved community through the unmatched power of singing as one. In this engaging and fun-filled workshop, participants will not only learn captivating new music, by both reading and rote, but also have the experience of becoming a community of reconciliation and joy—a choir that sings with transformative power and love.

Mark Miller will lead a volunteer group from our convention in a Gospel Choir during Worship Services on Wednesday night.

By registering to participate in this choir, you will automatically be enrolled in the Wednesday 5:00pm Choir Rehearsal, and will be expected to attend the Worship/Concert pair at Church of the Covenant beginning at 7:30 PM.

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Church of the Covenant

Concert: Cantata Singers

Premiere: Lo Ira Ra (I Will Not Fear) – Betty Olivero

Concert Program

Cantata Singers

A singular desire to bring to Boston’s listeners music that is not being heard anywhere else has inspired Cantata Singers’ programming for fifty years. In 1964, that music included the cantatas of J.S. Bach. When the ensemble was founded, live performances of Bach cantatas were quite a rarity. In fact, Cantata Singers’ early concerts featured first Boston performances of many of the cantatas. Bach’s music, from the cantatas to the Passions, remains an essential part of Cantata Singers’ repertoire. However, its repertoire has expanded to include music from the seventeenth century to today. Cantata Singers has commissioned thirteen works for chorus and orchestra—including one that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music—and has presented more than fifty Boston premieres of music both old and new.

 Many of Boston’s most talented musicians perform regularly with Cantata Singers. Its choru comprises singers with careers as musicians, educators, doctors, and architects. Many appear as soloists with Cantata Singers and with other highly respected organizations; some conduct other choruses and orchestras. Although many of our musicians actively perform as solo singers, they choose to sing with Cantata Singers because of the reward they find in performing music of the choral canon at the highest possible level.

Cantata Singers audiences return year after year to hear fresh visions of iconic music, or an intriguing unfamiliar work that is—in fact—quite approachable. Each Cantata Singers concert is often surprising, sometimes challenging, always beautiful, and ultimately inspiring.

David Hoose, director

David Hoose

The 2013–2014 season marks David Hoose’s thirty-first as Cantata Singers’ music director. With this ensemble, he was a recipient of the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming, the Choral Arts New England’s 2008 Alfred Nash Patterson Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Alice M. Ditson Conductors Award for the Advancement of American Music. He was also a recipient of the Dmitri Mitropoulos Award at the Berkshire (Tanglewood) Music Center and, as a founding member of the Emmanuel Wind Quintet, co-recipient of the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award.

Mr. Hoose is music director of Collage New Music, former music director of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, and professor of music and director of orchestral activities at the Boston University School of Music. He has appeared as guest conductor of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Philharmonic, Saint Louis Symphony, Utah Symphony, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, and Orchestra Regionale Toscana (Italy), and at the Monadnock, Warebrook (Vermont), New Hampshire, and Tanglewood music festivals, among others. In Boston, he has guest conducted the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Handel and Haydn Society, Back Bay Chorale, Chorus pro Musica, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, Emmanuel Music, Dinosaur Annex, Alea III, Auros, and Fromm Chamber Players.

Mr. Hoose studied composition with Walter Aschaffenburg, Richard Hoffmann, Arthur Berger, and Harold Shapero, and conducting with Gustav Meier. His recording of John Harbison’s Motetti di Montale was a Grammy Award nominee for Best Recording with Small Ensemble. His recordings appear on the New World, Koch, Nonesuch, Delos, CRI, GunMar, and Neuma labels.

Hour of Power: Joyful Resistance and the Soul of African-American Sacred Music

 There is a core of African-American sacred music, from the spirituals of slavery to the Civil Rights songs of the mid-twentieth century, that provide a context for Christianity that highlights God’s justice and Jesus’ preference for the oppressed and the marginalized. This is the music, along with present-day songs of ‘joyful resistance,’ that is featured in the Hour of Power worship service. As musical enliveners of worship, we have the opportunity to enhance the ways in which the pipe organ, alone or in collaboration with other instruments, makes the congregation’s song more meaningful and memorable. Besides being a lot of fun, the service will prayerfully be a useful model for service playing in diverse performance practices and styles.

Mark Miller

Mark Miller

Mark Miller believes passionately that music can change the world. He also believes in Cornell West’s statement, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Mr. Miller’s dream is that the music he composes, performs, teaches, and leads will inspire and empower people to create the beloved community. He is assistant professor of church music at Drew Theological School and lecturer in the practice of sacred music at Yale University. He also is minister of music at Christ Church in Summit, New Jersey. Since 1999, he has led music for United Methodists and others around the country, including that for the 2008 General Conference. His choral anthems are best-sellers for Abingdon Press and Choristers Guild, and his hymns are widely published. He received his Bachelor of Arts in music from Yale University and his Master of Music in organ performance from The Juilliard School.

ONLINE and ONCARD: Technologies at the Horizon of the AGO’s Digital Frontier

Join Bill Valentine, director of information technology and digital communications for the American Guild of Organists, and Mary Stutz, director of the Guild’s Committee on New Technology, for a walkthrough and discussion of the new ONCARD online dues payment system. Learn about the Guild’s latest digital initiatives, including the redesign of the AGO National website.

Mary Stutz

Mary Stutz, director of the American Guild of Organists’ Committee on New Technology, is manager of internet operations for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Williamsburg, Virginia. She also serves as webmaster for the Richmond chapter of the Guild and is associate organist at St. Bede Catholic Church, Williamsburg.

Bill Valentine

Bill Valentine has served as director of information technology and digital communications for the American Guild of Organists since November 2012. His previous experience includes website design and development and fifteen years of managing IT projects at Columbia University and New York University.

Order of Worship

New Music Premiere: “Benedictus” – SATB chorus and organ, Scott Perkins

Sung Morning Prayer takes place in the imposing Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help,  known affectionately among Bostonians as “Mission Church,” on the titular feast of their church, July 27, the Solemnity of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.  In what will be the first of a full day of celebrations at the basilica, this morning liturgy will follow the Office of Lauds, according to the Roman rite, featuring the winners of both the 2014 AGO/ECS Publishing Award in Choral Composition and the 2014 AGO/Marilyn Mason Award in Organ Composition.  The Choir of St. Paul’s Church, Cambridge, will provide the music for the liturgy, under the direction of John Robinson, conductor, and Dr. Jonathan Wessler, organ.  The choir is based at the only Roman Catholic Boys Choir School in America, while the professional men are drawn from local music colleges including Longy School of Music, New England Conservatory, and Boston Conservatory.

First Church in Boston

New Music Premieres: “Embertides” for organ, Hilary Tann  and “Prayers of Hildegard”, chorus and marimba, Edward Thompson 

Unitarian Worship

Order of Worship

Choir of the First Church in Boston

These services are being presented in the context of First Church’s Sunday Unitarian Universalist worship broadcast each week by Emerson College Radio (88.9 FM). Featured works include the premieres of Hilary Tann’s Embertides for organ and a commissioned work for choir and marimba by Ed Thompson. The professional First Church Choir conducted by Director of Music Paul Cienniwa sings Karl Henning’s motet Love is the Spirit of this Church and former Director of Music Leo Collins’ in mutuall love…, a setting of First Church’s founding covenant.

Concert: Peter Sykes (Harpsichord)

Concert Program

  Peter Sykes is associate professor of music and chair of the Historical Performance Department at Boston University, where he teaches organ, harpsichord, performance practice, and continuo realization. He is also music director of First Church in Cambridge and director of the Keyboard Day segment of the Boston Early Music Festival. He performs extensively on the harpsichord, clavichord, and organ, and has made ten solo recordings of organ repertoire ranging from the music of Buxtehude, Couperin, and Bach, to that of Reger and Hindemith, to his own acclaimed organ transcription of Holst’s The Planets. His recently released a recording of the complete Bach harpsichord partitas on the Centaur label, and will soon release an all-Bach clavichord recording and the complete Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier. He also performs and records with Boston Baroque and Aston Magna. A founding board member and current president of the Boston Clavichord Society, he is the recipient of the New England Conservatory’s 1978 Chadwick Medal and 2005 Outstanding Alumni Award, the Cambridge Society for Early Music’s 1993 Erwin Bodky Prize, and the St. Botolph Club Foundation’s 2011 Distinguished Artist Award.