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.

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.