Discovering the Dramatic Essence in Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on B.A.C.H.

Franz Liszt’s Prelude and Fugue on B.A.C.H. represents something radically new in the organ repertoire: it is the first major organ work in which gradual changes of dynamics and tempo are essential elements of expression and structure. This paper applies Hugo Riemann’s theories to B.A.C.H., showing that the pacing and dynamic shape—or musical flow—of the piece are affected by dynamic tension, from the motivic level to the larger structural level. The paper draws on organ descriptions and texts on registration, tempo, articulation, and phrasing in the German Romantic tradition generally and in sources that relate to Liszt specifically.

Lars Gjerde

Norwegian organist Lars Gjerde earned doctoral and master’s degrees in organ performance, and sacred music diploma, with David Higgs and Hans Davidsson at the Eastman School of Music. He studied harpsichord with William Porter and jazz piano with Tony Caramia. He received degrees in music and German from Augustana College of Liberal Arts in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and from the Edvard Grieg Academy in Bergen, Norway. He has won many scholarships, participated in academies and performed around America and Europe, and played on Pipedreams. He is director of music at Bethesda Lutheran Church in New Haven. He is dean and 2015 regional convention coordinator for the New Haven chapter of the AGO. His 2013–2014 guest lecture and performance appearances include Eastman’s EROI festival, Yale University, Augustana College, and DePauw University. His research on organ music from Norway was featured in the Norwegian Church Music Magazine in 2013.

Gospel Worship Choir Rehearsal

Panel of American Composers: Searle Wright, Larry King, Clarence Mader

Handout Composer Larry King

The panel will provide insights into the music and lives of the American Composers.

Panel: Peter Krasinski, Moderator

Peter Krasinski

Peter Edwin Krasinskicurrently 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.

Andrew Kotylo

Andrew Kotylo has concertized throughout the United States and in England, with critically acclaimed appearances at regional and national American Guild of Organists conventions. His performances have earned him top prizes in several major competitions, including the Guild’s National Young Artists Competition and the Arthur Poister and San Marino competitions, and he has been featured several times on Pipedreams. He holds degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied with Christopher Young and Larry Smith and wrote his dissertation on the life and works of his former teacher, Searle Wright. Currently, he is associate director of music at the historic Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut, and is involved with every facet of a busy music program that includes one of the nation’s oldest choirs of men and boys. He also maintains an active private teaching studio.

Cherry Rhodes

Cherry Rhodes is the first American to win an international organ competition (Munich). During her brilliant career, she has toured extensively throughout the major music capitals of America and Europe, with recitals and festival appearances in churches, cathedrals, and concert halls, including the Kennedy Center; Lincoln Center; Orchestra Hall (Chicago); Meyerson Symphony Center (Dallas); the Kimmel Center; Royal Festival Hall (London); the International Performing Arts Center (Moscow); the Philharmonic halls of Berlin, Dortmund, and Luxembourg; St. Augustine (Vienna); and Notre-Dame (Paris). She was one of the first organists to perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall, performing there several times as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in recitalist. Many of her recordings and performances have been broadcast internationally. She has been featured at numerous American Guild of Organists national and regional conventions. She is adjunct professor of organ at the University of Southern California, Thornton School of Music.

Jacob Benda

Jacob Benda, a native of St. Cloud, Minnesota, is currently completing his Doctor of Musical Arts at Louisiana State University under the tutelage of Dr. Herndon Spillman. Over the past three years, he has developed a profound appreciation and admiration for the organ music of Clarence Mader (1904–1971). His research on the prolific composer has led to interviews and coaching sessions with former students of Mader’s, such as Ladd Thomas, Orpha Ochse, Thomas Murray, and William Beck. He has been featured as a concert artist throughout the United States and is currently in the process of recording the first compact disc to exclusively feature the organ music of Clarence Mader. The recording will include Mader’s monumental Concerto for Organ, and will be released by Centaur Records in 2014.

Sound Theology: The Organ at the Time of the Reformation

At the time of the Reformation, Roman Catholic and Protestant churches alike disallowed the use of the pipe organ in services of divine worship; the lecture first reviews the theological reasons for this prohibition. Yet, in less than one hundred years’ time, theological dictum notwithstanding, almost all churches [re-]incorporated the pipe organ in order to rescue exasperated a cappella singers. This paper examines the intriguing history of the pipe organ during this era, tracing its role as a concert instrument used before and after worship, then as a silent backdrop during worship, and finally its reinstatement as a liturgical instrument.

Randall Engle

Randall D. Engle, Ph.D., is the senior pastor of the North Hills Christian Reformed Church of Troy, Michigan, and adjunct professor of theology at Oakland University and Detroit Ecumenical Theological Seminary. He is also chaplain for the Detroit chapter of the American Guild of Organists, a trustee of Calvin College, and former president of the national Board of Directors for the Choristers Guild. He received a Bachelor of Arts in music (organ) from Calvin College, and a Master of Divinity from Calvin Theological Seminary. He also received a Master of Arts in Worship from Luther Seminary, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Wales, where his dissertation was on the pipe organ’s evolution from a concert instrument to a liturgical instrument during the Reformation (also the subject of a paper given at this convention).

The Jazz-influenced Service Music of Joe Utterback

Handout

Live organ and piano solo and duet selections of Joe Utterback’s service music, with commentary about performance practice. A handout relates various service music pieces to the church year.

Joe Utterback

Joe Utterback—jazz pianist, composer, and recording artist—is director of music and organist at First Congregational Church, Stratford, Connecticut. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and is a member of the music faculty of Sacred Heart University, Fairfield. His recent recording, Souvenirs!, marks fifty years of jazz performances, both internationally and throughout the United States. His more than 380 published compositions include many jazz-influenced organ arrangements of spirituals, gospel songs, hymns, and original material. His catalog also includes instrumental works with organ and voice, including three larger choral compositions: Missa Jazzis, Newton Requiem, and Love Remembered, published by Jazzmuze, Inc.

Andrew Shenton

Andrew Shenton is a scholar, prize-winning author, performer, and educator based in Boston. He first studied at The Royal College of Music in London, and holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from London, Yale, and Harvard universities, respectively. He holds the Choir Training and Fellowship diplomas of the Royal College of Organists. He has toured extensively in Europe and the United States as a conductor, recitalist, and clinician, and has received numerous scholarships and awards, including Harvard’s Certificate of Distinction in Teaching and a Junior Fellowship from the Humanities Foundation at Boston University. Moving freely between musicology and ethnomusicology, his work is best subsumed under the heading “music and transcendence,” and includes several major publications on Messiaen, Pärt, and others. He is associate professor of music at Boston University, artistic director of the Boston Choral Ensemble, and director of music at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Weston, Massachusetts.

Regional Convention Coordinators

Future regional convention coordinators will meet with Mark Babcock to discuss process and procedures for hosting an AGO Regional Convention.

Mark Babcock

Mark A. Babcock received a bachelor’s degree in music education from Central College in Pella, Iowa, and a master’s degree in choral conducting and organ performance from Westminster Choir College in Princeton. He also pursued doctoral studies in choral conducting and organ at the University of Iowa. He has worked with great musical leaders such as Joseph Flummerfelt, Joan Lippincott, Robert Shaw, and Riccardo Mutti. He is the M. Joan Farver Endowed Professor of Music, chair of the Music Department, and director of choral activities at Central College, where his duties include private organ instruction; coursework in church music, music education, and music theory; and choral conducting. He is organist/choirmaster at St. Mark Lutheran Church in West Des Moines and the American Guild of Organists national councillor for conventions. He has also served the Guild as dean of the Central Iowa chapter and chair of the 2011 Region VI convention.

The Rise and Fall of Ernest M. Skinner: 1885-1950

Drawing upon three decades of archival and site research, Jonathan Ambrosino provides new illumination on the career arc of Ernest M. Skinner, America’s most influential American organbuilder.

Jonathan Ambrosino

Boston native Jonathan Ambrosino is an organ technician, consultant, and journalist. He has been involved with tonal restoration projects on important twentieth-century American organs, most recently the 1927 Skinner at St. Paul’s, Rochester; the 1930 Aeolian at Longwood Gardens; and the 1938 Kimball at St. John’s Cathedral, Denver. As a consultant, he has served more than 130 churches and schools, surveying organs and guiding projects of many kinds. Known for speaking and writing, he has been Choir & Organ’s chief correspondent for the United States organ building scene. At home, he curates select Boston-area instruments, including those of Old South Church and Church of the Advent, and is currently engaged in the restoration of a 1929 Skinner for his home church, the Parish of All Saints, Ashmont. He is a past president of the Organ Historical Society, and served on the committee for the Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition.

Glorious Praise: Praise Music Grows Up in the Digital Age

Handout

Cheryl Duerr with The Attleboro Covenant Praise Team

Cheryl Duerr

Praise music is growing up in the digital age—the genre is now infused with jazz, gospel, and even classical style. This demonstration of crossover styles equips you to ride the wave of changes church musicians face today: it surveys styles and theology; supplies resources and links on the language of chords, improvisation, modulation, instrumentation, and alternative keyboard styles; offers strategies for working with congregational requests for changes; and supplies a bibliography with resources for finding and presenting great songs. The Attleboro Covenant Praise Team plays live, dynamic examples of the best crossover songs from various styles for group participation.

Cheryl Duerr, M.M., AAGO, ICF, is American Guild of Organists councillor for Region I. As minister of music at Attleboro Covenant, she leads one praise-based and one traditional service each Sunday, with the Chancel Choir, Celebration Ringers, Junior Choir, Junior Ringers, and the Praise Team. The Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) is a Christian denomination of more than eight hundred congregations in the United States and Canada. Founded in 1885 by Swedish immigrants, and Lutheran in theology, the church is one of the most rapidly growing and multi-ethnic denominations in North America representing the gamut of musical styles.