The University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music recently announced a new scholarship: The Nathan J. Laube Organ Scholarship will support undergraduate and graduate organ majors in the Department of Organ, Sacred Music, & Historical Keyboards at the Eastman School of Music. The scholarship, named after Eastman Assistant Professor Nathan J. Laube, has been established by a donation from Mark R. Woodworth and Randi Ravitts Woodworth, whose daughter Madeleine studied pipe organ in the studio of Nathan Laube for four years and graduated from the Eastman School of Music in May 2018.
Mr. and Mrs. Woodworth said “At the age of 13, our daughter discovered the wonders of the pipe organ while attending an AGO Pipe Organ Encounter, and ever since then, we have been grateful to the organ community for nurturing her talent. In that spirit, we are honored to be able to assist her teacher, Professor Nathan J. Laube, and his colleagues in cultivating the remarkable young organists who come to study at the Eastman School of Music, now and in the future.”
“In a time when we are witnessing such a growing need for scholarship among young musicians, I wish to express my tremendous gratitude to the Woodworth family for their amazing generosity to help the talented young organists of today and tomorrow pursue and attain their dreams,” expresses Nathan Laube, for whom this scholarship is named. “It is a great honor to receive this scholarship in my name, one which will help to ensure that the remarkable legacy of performance and scholarship in the Eastman Organ Department is carried into the future by attracting the finest musicians around.”
In addition to serving as Assistant Professor of Organ on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, and his new position as International Consultant in Organ Studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK, Nathan Laube’s extensive recital career includes major venues spanning four continents. Recent appearances include at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), Notre-Dame Cathedral (Paris), St. Paul’s Cathedral (London), Maison Symphonique (Montreal), Victoria Hall (Geneva), and the Sejong Center (Seoul). Highlight performances in the USA include concert halls in Dallas, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Nashville, Madison, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, among others. In October 2016 he performed the first inaugural recital of the restored Harrison & Harrison organ of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, and for the summer of 2017, he was appointed the first “Organist in Residence” on the celebrated 1738 Christiaan Müller organ in St. Bavo in Haarlem, the Netherlands. He recently completed a residency at the Berlin Philharmonie including a performance of the Hindemith Kammermusik VII with the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and in 2019 he will perform J.S. Bach’s complete third part of the Clavierübung at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
Mr. Laube is regularly invited to important international organ festivals in Europe as a performer, lecturer, and pedagogue, and additionally serves as co-chair of the 2018 national convention of the Organ Historical Society (OHS) which will be held in Rochester, NY. In 2015, Mr. Laube’s recording of Stephen Paulus Grand Concerto on the Naxos label recorded with the Nashville Symphony, Giancarlo Guerrero, conducting, received a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Compendium. Additionally, many of his live performances have been featured on American Public Media’s “Pipedreams.”
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About the Eastman School of Music:
The Eastman School of Music was founded in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman (1854-1932), founder of Eastman Kodak Company. It was the first professional school of the University of Rochester. Mr. Eastman’s dream was that his school would provide a broad education in the liberal arts as well as superb musical training. The current dean is Jamal Rossi, appointed in 2014.
About 900 students are enrolled in Eastman’s Collegiate Division—about 500 undergraduate and 400 graduate students. Students come from almost every state, and approximately 20 percent are from other countries. They are guided by more than 95 full-time faculty members. Six alumni and three faculty members have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music, as have numerous GRAMMYÒ Awards. Each year, Eastman’s students, faculty members, and guest artists present more than 700 concerts to the Rochester community.