Old South Church in Boston

Worship — Into the Light: A Journey with Jesus of Nazareth

The singers and instrumentalists of Old South Church under the direction of Minister of Music Harry Lyn Huff and Associate Choirmaster and Organist George Sargeant offer a new twist on the traditional Lessons and Carols format, blending hymns, anthems, instrumental meditations, and interactive Scripture readings
in a unique style of prayer and praise. Led by the 1921 E.M. Skinner organ, the Steinway concert grand piano, and the Willie Sordillo Jazz Trio, the services are enhanced by the Old South Choir and soloists, Old South Ringers (handbells), cellist Sam Ou, and flutist Ainsley Land with music by Duke Ellington, Calvin Hampton and Leon Roberts

Peter Krasinski

Concert: Silent Movie “Old Ironsides”

Peter Edwin Krasinski currently serves as organist of First Church of Christ, Scientist in Providence and as accompanist at Beth El Temple Center, Belmont, Massachusetts. He is on the faculty of the Boston Archdiocesan Choir School, Cambridge and serves as organ consultant on a number of high-profile projects. He holds both a Bachelor of Music in music education and organ performance and a Master of Sacred Music from Boston University. A winner of the first prize in improvisation in the American Guild of Organists National Competition, he has played in concert at many of the world’s most important organ venues. He has premiered the art of silent film accompaniment at many distinguished venues, including Saint Paul Church, Cambridge; National City Christian Church, Washington, D.C.; Cathedral of St. Joseph, Hartford; Saint Joseph’s Oratory, Montreal; Second Congregational Church, Holyoke; and major halls in Yokohama, Fukui, Miyazaki, and Kanazawa, Japan.

The Church of the Advent

Solemn Evensong

New Music Premiere, David Lasky

Solemn Evensong is sung at Beacon Hill’s historic Church of the Advent on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. The 18-voice Advent Choir is a professional ensemble under the direction of Organist & Choirmaster Mark Dwyer accompanied by Associate Organist & Choirmaster Ross Wood on the church’s 1935 Aeolian-Skinner organ. Founded in 1844 in response to the Oxford Movement, the Advent is the oldest Anglo-Catholic parish in America.  The liturgy combines Anglican Choral Evensong from the Book of Common Prayer with a Solemn Procession for the Feast of Saint Botolph, Boston’s patron saint, with canticles by Herbert Howells, Renaissance polyphony, and the premiere of a new organ chorale prelude by New England composer David Lasky.

Concert: John Scott

Concert Program

John Scott

John Scott was raised a Cathedral chorister in Yorkshire and served as organ scholar at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he assisted George Guest. He studied with Jonathan Bielby, Ralph Downes, and Dame Gillian Weir, and made his debut in the 1977 Promenade Concerts at Royal Albert Hall, then the youngest organist to do so. On leaving Cambridge, he was appointed assistant organist at London’s two Anglican cathedrals, St. Paul’s and Southwark. During this time, he won first prizes in the Manchester and Leipzig J.S. Bach international competitions. In 1985, he became sub-organist at St. Paul’s, and, in 1990, organist and director of music.

Dr. Scott has performed on five continents in many of the world’s most prominent venues, premiered many works written for him, and collaborated with specialist ensembles. He recently performed the complete organ works of Buxtehude and Messiaen to commemorate their anniversaries. He is a prolific recording artist, and has served on many international competition juries. He also has published many choral compositions and arrangements, and co-edited two compilations of liturgical music, published by Oxford University Press.

In 2004, after twenty-six years at St. Paul’s, Dr. Scott was appointed organist and director of music at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York, where he directs the renowned Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys. He was awarded the Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order in the New Year’s Honours List in 2004, and, in 2007, was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Nashotah House Seminary.

The First Lutheran Church of Boston

Order of Worship

Lutheran Vespers

Canto Armonico, under the direction of Dr. Ulf Wellner and Cheryl Ryder, with First Lutheran’s Minister of Music Bálint Karosi, organ, present “A Praetorius Organ Vespers for Pentecost,” a reconstruction of a Lutheran service as it may have been celebrated in northern Germany in the 17^th century. The readings for Pentecost feature topics such as rushing wind, mighty waters, eternal fires and speaking in tongues, all associated with spectacular music by two acquainted but unrelated organists who shared the same last name: Hieronymus of Hamburg, credited with bringing the Venetian polychoral and concerted styles to that prosperous city, and the better-known Michael, a theorist, composer and performer active in Dresden and Wolfenbüttel.  Starting with Michael Praetorius’ Veni sancte Spiritus/Komm, heiliger Geist, the service includes chant, congregational responsories, strophic psalms, the Veni Creator sequence, a Magnificat with organ and choral interpolations, a Renaissance motet from the time of Holy Roman Emperor Karl V,  and solo organ works by Praetorius and Heinrich Scheidemann on the Richards & Fowkes organ.  We are especially excited to present the rarely heard Herr Gott, dich loben wir (Te Deum) of Hieronymus Praetorius, for four choirs and instrumentalists arrayed about the building.

 Concert: Joan Lippincott and the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Orchestra

Joan Lippincott

Concert Program

Joan Lippincott has been acclaimed as one of America’s outstanding organ virtuosos. She performs extensively in the United States, under Karen McFarlane Artists, and has toured throughout Europe and Canada. She was principal university organist of Princeton University from 1993 through 2000, and is professor emerita of organ at Westminster Choir College. She presently devotes her full time to concertizing and recording.

Ms. Lippincott’s many recordings on the GOTHIC label include music of Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Widor, Alain, and Pinkham on major American organs. Her most recent releases are J.S. Bach Art of Fugue, recorded at Christ Church, Rochester, NY; J.S. Bach Concerto Transcriptions at Princeton Seminary; and J.S. Bach Weimar Preludes and Fugues at the University of Notre Dame. She is an honorary member of Sigma Alpha Iota, and has received an Alumni Merit Award, the Distinguished Merit Award, the Williamson Medal, and an honorary doctorate from Westminster Choir College. A festschrift, Joan Lippincott: The Gift of Music, by Larry G. Biser was published by the Organ Historical Society in 2013.

Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble

The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) Chamber Ensemble was established in October 2008 by BEMF Artistic Directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs for the dedication of the Craighead-Saunders Organ, at Christ Church, Rochester, in a program at that year’s Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative. The group delighted the public a month later at the inauguration of the BEMF Chamber Opera Series,  which débuted in Boston with a semi-staged production of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis and Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon. The BEMF Chamber Ensemble is a unique and intimate subset of the three-time Grammy-nominated BEMF Orchestra. Eight of the BEMF Orchestra’s top string players comprise the chamber ensemble appearing with organist Joan Lippincott at the American Guild of Organists 2014 National Convention.

Robert Mealy

 Robert Mealy, director,  is one of America’s most prominent historical string players. His playing has been praised by The Boston Globe for its “imagination, taste, subtlety, and daring.” He has recorded and toured with many ensembles both in America and in Europe, including Les Arts Florissants, Tafelmusik, American Bach Soloists, Sequentia, and Tragicomedia. A frequent concertmaster and soloist in New York, he performs regularly in Trinity Church Wall Street’s weekly series of Bach cantatas. He has served as concertmaster of the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, since 2004, in three Grammy-nominated recordings and many festival performances, including a special appearance at Versailles in fall 2009. In 2013, he was appointed Orchestra Director for the Boston Early Music Festival. He has also toured to Moscow with the Mark Morris Dance Group and accompanied Renée Fleming on the David Letterman Show. A devoted chamber musician, he co-directs Quicksilver, whose début recording was hailed as “breakthrough CD of the year” by The Huffington Post. He is also a member of The King’s Noyse and the medieval quartet Fortune’s Wheel.

Mr. Mealy is director of the Historical Performance program at The Juilliard School and professor of music at Yale University, where he directs the postgraduate Yale Baroque Ensemble. In 2004, he received Early Music America’s Binkley Award for outstanding university teaching. He has recorded more than eighty CDs on most major labels.

9:00–10:00 a.m.

Opening Worship | Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston

New Music Premieres

“Eternal Ruler of the Ceaseless Round” – SATB chorus and Organ – Libby Larsen

“March to Glory” – Organ Solo – Carol Barnett

“O Be Joyful in the Lord” – SATB Chorus and Organ – Matthew Martin

“Sortie” – Organ Solo – Daniel Roth (Commissioned by Leo Abbott)

Cathedral of the Holy Cross

The 2014 AGO national convention’s opening worship service takes place at historic Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston’s South End. The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, Episcopal priest and author, is the featured preacher. The service includes the premiere of “Eternal Ruler of the Ceaseless Round” by Libby Larsen, “March to Glory” by Minnesota-based composer Carol Barnett, and a Jubilate Deo by Matthew Martin, sung by the Choir of Trinity Church, Copley Square, conducted by Director of Music and Organist Richard Webster accompanied by Associate Director of Music and Organist Colin Lynch. Also receiving its first performance is a Sortie by Daniel Roth of Saint Sulpice, Paris, commissioned and performed by Leo Abbott, Music Director and Organist at Holy Cross Cathedral.  Written specifically for the cathedral’s 1875 E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings organ, the work is based on the plainchant Ut queant laxis. The commission was partially funded by grants from the Boston Chapter AGO, Special Projects Advisory Committee; the District of Columbia AGO Foundation; and a donation from the Durgin family in memory of the late C. Peter Durgin.

Night Song (Compline) is the inspiration of its artistic director and founder, Daryl Bichel, Boston organist, composer, and singer.  Night Song reflects his Anglo-Catholic faith as well as his affinity for ancient and contemporary chant, Renaissance polyphony, and jazz. Participation in Night Song is through listening and silent prayer.  It is not meant to be a performance but rather a “transformance” encouraging an inner journey toward peace, clarity, centering, and spiritual renewal.  Set apart from the sights, sounds, and values of current culture, Night Song helps participants enter a mystical sphere to experience the Divine.  While Christian in nature, it speaks to a diverse cross-section of people entirely through music, punctuated by three long periods of silence. Bichel’s tri-tone chant setting for compline, his Anglican chant psalm setting, his setting of the compline hymn text “Jesus, Redeemer of the World,”, and three pieces of Renaissance polyphony are sung by Beneficia lucis, an ensemble of a dozen men led by James Busby. Jazz instrumentalists offer musical meditations and improvised accompaniments to plainchant under the direction of Ben Schwendener, an influential voice in contemporary creative music and a leading authority on George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization.

Designing Promotional Materials

Handout

Learn tips and tricks for designing print and electronic materials, including concert programs, brochures, church bulletins and newsletters (you never know when you’ll become the Secretary!), postcards, and websites. Topics include fonts, graphics, whitespace, and general formatting. The workshop is geared towards those with intermediate computer experience. Microsoft Word and Publisher, as well as Dreamweaver, are featured, although the ideas shared are applicable to other programs on all operating systems. Handouts are available, and a sampling of print materials is available onsite for exploring additional ideas.

Heidi Kohne

Heidi Kohne is a freelance organist in Portland, Oregon, after holding the position of music director and organist (and, later, financial secretary) at Mt. Tabor Presbyterian Church for eleven years. She received her Bachelor of Music from DePauw University and Master of Music from Indiana University, both in organ. She also holds Service Playing and Colleague certificates from the American Guild of Organists. She was on the steering committees for the Guild’s 2007 Region VIII convention and 2011 POE, both in Portland. She has performed at two Guild conventions: the 1996 national convention in New York City, as part of a POE workshop, and the 2013 regional convention in Salem, Oregon, her hometown, as a recitalist. Currently, she is the secretary and part-owner of a family-owned rural telephone company in Illinois. A past dean of the Portland AGO chapter, she is the current treasurer and webmistress.

Keyboard Psychohaptics: Empirical Performance and Pedagogy Research and its Applications

Recent empirical research into the complex connections between music cognition and the kinesthetics of keyboard performance promises to reshape our understanding of organ technique and keyboard pedagogy. This exciting new field of research, “keyboard psychohaptics,” seeks to merge existing scientific theories of music cognition with the study of keyboard performance kinesthetics. This workshop summarizes recent work in this field and fosters an open discussion of the important ramifications of this and future research in areas of organ performance and pedagogy. Geared toward a lay audience, this workshop is designed to engage experts and non-experts alike.

Randall Harlow

Performer-scholar Randall Harlow’s expertise includes empirical performance research, the Inuit organ tradition, hyperorgan technology, and twenty-first-century avant-garde. He has presented at conferences at Harvard University, Cornell University, Westfield Center, the Society for Music Perception and Cognition, Göteborg International Organ Art Center (GOArt), and Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival. Past research includes the first study of the pipe organ culture of Greenland. He currently serves on the AGO Committee for New Music Competitions and Commissions. His numerous premieres include compositions by John Anthony Lennon, Kaikhosru Sorabji, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, concertos by Petr Eben, Tilo Medek, and Giles Swayne, and works with live electronics by Steve Everett, Steven Rice, and René Uijlenhoet. His forthcoming debut recording features a transcription of Franz Liszt’s legendary Études d’Exécution Transcendante. He holds a DMA from the Eastman School of Music and is currently visiting professor of organ and music theory at the University of Northern Iowa.

Changing Stops: American Organs and Registration in the Nineteenth Century

Handout

The nineteenth century saw the evolution of the American organ’s tonal and mechanical design from a retrospective echo of the eighteenth-century English model to a forward-looking prototype of the twentieth-century’s instruments. Overlapping British, German, and French tonal concepts coalesced into a style that was uniquely American. Organ music written by American composers followed a parallel evolution, particularly with regard to registrational practice, plainly influenced by the organs they played.

Barbara Owen

Barbara Owen holds degrees in organ performance and musicology from Westminster Choir College and Boston University. She is author of numerous articles, entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music, and books, including The Organ in New England, E. Power Biggs: Concert Organist, The Registration of Baroque Organ Music, The Organ Music of Johannes Brahms, and The Great Organ of Methuen. She was Music Director of the First Religious Society of Newburyport (1963–2002) and Librarian of the AGO Organ Library at Boston University (1985–2012), and is currently active as organist, lecturer, and consultant. A former AGO regional councillor and dean of two chapters, she is past president of the Organ Historical Society and a trustee of Methuen Memorial Music Hall. Honors include the American Musical Instrument Society Curt Sachs Award, the Westminster Choir College Alumni Merit Citation, the Max Miller Book Award, and the Organ Historical Society Distinguished Service Award.

Discovering the Organ Library and Archives of the Boston AGO Chapter

The Organ Library of the Boston AGO Chapter is one of the largest collections of organ music in the world. Its web catalog, at www.organlibrary.org, is a searchable database that gives access to information about the more than 50,000 musical works in the collection. The Web Catalog lists the complete contents of anthologies and single-composer collections. The Library’s holdings include archives that document the careers of notable performers, among them T. Tertius Noble and E. Power Biggs. This workshop explores the practical value of the Web Catalog’s search feature and gives a virtual tour of the Library’s extensive archival holdings.

Help! My bucket is always full! Time Management for Musicians

Handout

This workshop generously sponsored by the Worcester Chapter of the AGO

Learn time-management techniques; psychological resistance tools for sticking with tasks; methods for hierarchical focus and top-down planning; how to trust that you have listed your project steps in order to accomplish them in due time; compensatory tactics to minimize task avoidance, subconscious deferral, and perfectionistic tendencies; how to match time of day (and moods) with the tasks best performed then; and how to unleash your creative spirit to produce happy collisions of ideas that offer fresh twists for composition/improvisation, programming, and marketing.

Will Sherwood

A lifelong juggler of careers and skills, Will Sherwood has navigated the superposition of demands from the corporate world (thirty years at DEC, Compaq, and Intel in Microprocessor Design engineering management), church music (fifty years), and his own businesses (graphic design, web/database design and hosting, and commercial photography). Balancing priorities of multiple professions and home life, he has accumulated techniques and perspectives to manage a plethora of simultaneous projects and to keep focus while creative impulses emerge all over the map. As an organist, he has performed in Europe and the United States, including as guest soloist with the Boston Pops. He is dean of the Worcester chapter of the American Guild of Organists, artistic director of Mechanics Hall Organ Series, and director of music at First Unitarian, Worcester for more than twenty-five years. An avid runner, vegetarian, and organic gardener, he always has many irons in the fire.