EROI 2024
Hindsight is 20/24
November 10-13, 2024
Performer & Presenter Biographies
Christopher Anderson is a scholar and organist with particular interests in early musical modernism, German history and philosophy, the organ’s position in Western culture, and the composer Max Reger. He has written extensively on Reger and his music in two monographs (Max Reger and Karl Straube: Perspectives on an Organ Performing Tradition, Ashgate 2003; and Selected Writings of Max Reger, Routledge 2006) and many essays in international journals. He has translated into English the second volume of Jon Laukvik’s Historical Performance Practice in Organ Playing (Carus, 2010) and edited the first complete survey of organ music in the twentieth century (Twentieth-Century Organ Music, Routledge 2011). An exhaustive critical biography of the twentieth-century virtuoso organist and Leipzig Thomaskantor Karl Straube (Karl Straube 1873–1950: Germany’s Master Organist in Turbulent Times) appeared in 2022 with the Eastman Studies in Music, University of Rochester Press.
Prof. Anderson likewise has devoted considerable energy to the interpretation of infrequently heard music. His recent recording of Reger’s complete 52 Chorale Preludes, op. 67, appeared in 2022 with the Centaur label. Also that year he presented John Cage’s landmark organ work Organ 2 /ASLSP for sixteen continuous hours (Perkins Chapel, SMU Dallas), thus registering at the time the longest realization by a single human on record.
Christopher Anderson is Associate Professor of Sacred Music at Southern Methodist University, Dallas (TX), where he teaches courses in history and analysis in the Perkins School of Theology and the Meadows School of the Arts. He has taught adjunctively at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester (NY), and chairs the Publications Advisory Committee for the Organ Historical Society’s publishing program. Christopher Anderson holds the PhD in Performance Practices from Duke University.
Commended for his “masterful artistry” (The Diapason) and “stunning virtuosity and musicality” (Choir and Organ), David Baskeyfield has earned a reputation as a captivating performer, whose technical facility is tempered by intelligent and mature interpretation, and informed above all by intuitive and communicative musicianship. His repertoire is wide and eclectic, at home with the music of the Old Masters of the 17th-century and of the great 19th-century virtuosos. He is also one of relatively few organists in North America to improvise regularly in recital.
Mr. Baskeyfield is Organist and Choirmaster at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Greenville, NC, and Artistic Director of the East Carolina Musical Arts and Education Foundation, which underwrites programming centered around the St. Paul’s C. B. Fisk organ and seeks to promotes the instrument through outreach locally and nationally. He studied Law at Oxford University and holds Master’s and Doctoral degrees from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. Success in playing competitions includes first prizes in playing competitions; these include the Canadian International Organ Competition, St Albans, Miami, Mader, and the AGO National Competition in Organ Improvisation, all with audience prize. He has recorded for Cantoris, Gothic, ATMA Classique and Acis Productions. His 2018 album, Dupré: the American Experience, showcased the 1933 Aeolian Skinner organ of St. Mary the Virgin, Times Square in a program of music by a Frenchman influenced considerably by the modern instruments he encountered in North America, performed on a daring, forward-looking American organ speaking with a strong French accent.
Alongside solo performance, Mr. Baskeyfield enjoys work as a collaborative pianist, continuo player, and occasional cocktail pianist. He has been broadcast a number of times on American Public Media’s Pipedreams and NPR’s With Heart and Voice. He has occasionally given theater organ recitals. He is an avid inshore and offshore sports fisherman, a pursuit that has become considerably more convenient since moving to eastern North Carolina from upstate New York, and when not playing the organ can usually not be found fishing a section of the Pamlico river system whose location he is reluctant to disclose. He shares his house with two springer spaniels, Lucy and Wilbur.
Internationally renowned organist and harpsichordist Edoardo Bellotti is considered a leading expert of Renaissance and Baroque keyboard repertory and improvisation. In addition to his musical studies (Piano, Organ, Harpsichord) he studied humanities at the University of Pavia, his Italian native town, completing degrees in philosophy and theology.
Alongside teaching and performing, he has devoted himself to musicological research, publishing articles, essays and critical editions of organ music and presenting his work in international conferences. He has edited the first modern edition of two of the most important Baroque treatises on organ playing: Adriano Banchieri L’ Organo suonarino (Venice 1605), and Spiridion a Monte Carmelo Nova Instructio pro pulsandis organis (Bamberg 1670).
Bellotti published over 30 CDs, both as a soloist and in collaboration with vocal and instrumental ensembles, mostly tending to document and make known historical instruments and their repertoire.
Edoardo Bellotti taught organ and harpsichord performance and theory and practice of improvisation in several European institutions, including the conservatories of Milan, Trento, Udine and Pavia (Italy), Trossingen and Bremen (Germany) and has been invited as guest teacher in many institutions in Europe, Japan, South Korea, Canada and USA. From 2013 to 2018 he has been Professor of Organ, Harpsichord and Improvisation at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester, USA. From October 2018 to August 2023 he was invited to coordinate a new curriculum at the University of the Arts in Bremen (Germany) where he taught Organ, Clavichord and liturgical Improvisation.
Since October 2023 he has returned to Eastman as Associate Professor of Harpsichord, teaching Historical Keyboards and Continuo.
Known for his “solid technique… imaginative programming… tasteful creativity in registering orchestral textures” (AGO Charleston Chapter), Ryan Chan is recognized as a versatile musician specializing in organ and harpsichord. His passions for both early and contemporary repertoire, performance practice, historic/antique keyboards, experimentation and teaching define his musical identity. Hailing from Hong Kong, he has performed in notable venues across U.S. and Europe, including Freiberger Dom, Katholische Hofkirche Dresden, Kerk Noordbroek Groningen, St. James’ in the City Los Angeles, Syracuse University, etc. He has been featured in prominent festivals including Piccolo Spoleto L’Organo Charleston, Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, Rochester Early Music Festival, Skaneateles Festival, etc.
A laureate of several important competitions, Ryan was most recently awarded First Prize and Audience Prize in the 2024 American Guild of Organists National Young Artist Competition in Organ Performance. In 2023, he won Second Prize in the 16th International Gottfried Silbermann Organ Competition, held in Freiberg and Dresden. He was also the First Prize winner of the 2018 Arthur Poister Scholarship Competition in Organ Playing.
At the Eastman School of Music, Ryan is pursuing a Doctoral Degree in Organ Performance under the tutelage of David Higgs. He has already completed a Master’s Degree in Harpsichord Performance, having studied with Lisa Goode Crawford.
Ryan currently serves as Organist at the Rochester Christian Reformed Church in Rochester NY. Prior to this appointment, he was the VanDelinder Organ Fellow at Christ Church Rochester for three years, working with Music Director Stephen Kennedy. He performs regularly with Eastman’s Collegium Musicum, a baroque ensemble directed by Paul O’Dette and Christel Thielmann. As a harpsichordist, he has performed several Bach Concertos with orchestra, including Brandenberg Concerto No. 5, as well as a contemporary work by Armando Bayolo – [Unplanned] Obsolescence for Harpsichord and Orchestra. He has collaborated with Gloriæ Dei Cantores, The Society for New Music, the faculty at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute, and the faculty at the Eastman School of Music.
Charles Francis is a British-born organist who is earning increasing recognition as a young performer. Charles currently resides in the USA where he studies in the studio of Professor Nathan Laube at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. In addition, Charles is Assistant Organist at Third Presbyterian Church, Rochester, as well as Organist for the acclaimed Christ Church Schola Cantorum. Charles completed his undergraduate studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (UK) where he studied with Daniel Moult, Nicholas Wearne, and received frequent coaching with Professor Martin Schmeding. A Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, he has held organist positions at both churches and cathedrals in the UK, and his playing has been broadcast on both American and British radio.
Charles’ playing has earned him various accolades including First Prizes in both the IAO/RCO Organ Playing Competition (Edinburgh, 2022) and The Dame Gillian Weir Messiaen Competition (Birmingham, 2019). In November 2022, he was awarded the Silver Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians recognizing his outstanding achievements as an undergraduate student. Charles has performed in the USA, Germany, and the UK where recent recital venues include Westminster Abbey; St John’s Smith Square, London and a solo recital as part of the St Alban’s International Organ Festival.
Organist, composer and scholar Martin Herchenroeder has been a professor at the University of Siegen in Germany since 1994.
His compositions have been performed in Europe, Asia and America, e.g. by the Augsburg Philharmonic orchestra, the Philharmonia Hungarica, the NCPA Orchestra, Beijing, and other orchestras, and by soloists like Markus Stockhausen (trumpet), Friedrich Gauwerky and Alban Gerhardt (cello), Hans Davidsson and Werner Jacob (organ), the Arditti String quartet and others. They have been recorded on CD (Albany, Loft, neos, among others), broadcast by European, Chinese and North American radio stations, and featured at festivals including the Triennale Cologne and the Beijing Modern Music Festival. Commissioned by cities, institutions and orchestras, his compositions have been published by Bärenreiter and other publishers.
His solo organ repertoire comprises works from the Renaissance to the music of our time, with special focus on the compositions of J.S.Bach and music of the 20th century, with numerous world premieres. He has recorded works from various centuries for the WDR broadcasting corporation (Cologne) and the CD companies Koch Schwann, FFFZ, neos, among others. He performs and teaches in North America and Europe, including at festivals such as the Göteborg Organ Academy and EROI.
His main scholarly publications deal with contemporary music, especially contemporary organ music (book on György Ligeti’s organ works, edition of the late works by Bengt Hambraeus).
In 1998 he was a guest artist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver B.C. / Canada; since 2008 he has been a guest professor annually at the Eastman School of Music in the organ and composition departments. He has given classes and lectures at schools and universities around the world, including the Musikhochschule Köln, the Hochschule für Künste Bremen, the University of Chicago, the McGill University, Montreal, the Chinese Central Conservatory, Beijing, the Chopin Music University in Warsaw, NYU and the Juilliard School of Music. In 2015 and 2016, he was a guest professor at the Royal Academy of Music, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Professor Herchenröder studied organ with Ludger Lohmann and Wolfgang Stockmeier, music theory, and composition with Jürg Baur and Hans Werner Henze as well as music education and church music at the Cologne Musikhochschule, with further studies in Musicology and German literature at the Universität zu Köln.
One of America’s leading concert organists, David Higgs is also Chair of the Organ Department at the Eastman School of Music. He performs extensively throughout the United States and abroad, and has inaugurated many important new instruments including St. Stephan’s Cathedral, Vienna; the Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas; St. Albans Cathedral, England; St. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, Ireland; and the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City. For over twenty years he performed annual holiday organ concerts at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. His performances with numerous ensembles have included the San Francisco Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Orpheus Ensemble, Chanticleer, and the Empire Brass.
Mr. Higgs performs, teaches, and adjudicates at festivals and competitions throughout the world, including the International Organ Festivals and Competitions of Bremen, Germany; the Leipzig Bach Competition, Germany; the Gottfried Silbermann Competition in Freiberg, Germany; Calgary, Canada; Dublin, Ireland; Odense, Denmark; Stockholm, Sweden; Varzi, Italy; Redlands and San Anselmo, California; and the Gilmore International Keyboard Festival. In England he has appeared several times at the Oundle International Festival and Organ Academy, the St. Albans International Festival and Competition, and the Cambridge Summer Festival; in France, at the Xavier Darasse International Competition in Toulouse; and in Japan, at several venues, most recently an all-Bach recital for the composer’s birthday at Izumi Hall in Osaka. In 2018 he performed several concerts in France, including a solo recital at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, and was a guest teacher at the Paris Conservatoire. His performances for colleagues include national, regional and pedagogy conventions of the American Guild of Organists, as well as national conventions of the American Pipe Organ Builders Association, the American Institute of Organbuilders, the Westfield Center, and the Organ Historical Society; and in London, the Annual Congress of the Incorporated Association of Organists, and the International Congress of Organists.
A native of New York City, Mr. Higgs held his first position as a church organist at age ten; as a teenager, he performed classical music as well as rock, gospel, and soul music. He earned the Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at the Manhattan School of Music, and the Performer’s Certificate from the Eastman School of Music. His teachers have included Claire Coci, Peter Hurford, Russell Saunders, and Frederick Swann. In New York City, he was Director of Music and Organist at Park Avenue Christian Church, and later Associate Organist of the Riverside Church, where he also conducted the Riverside Choral Society. After moving to San Francisco in 1986, he became Director of Music and Organist at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, Director of Church Music Studies at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, and Organist/Choir Director at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco.
In addition to his significant performing career, Mr. Higgs has distinguished himself as a pedagogue. He was appointed to the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music upon graduation from that institution, and has been a member of the faculty of the Eastman School of Music since 1992. His students have won prizes in prestigious international competitions, and hold important positions in leading academic and religious institutions.
Mr. Higgs has recorded for Delos International, Pro Organo, Arsis, Loft, and Gothic records.
Andrew Johnson, AAGO, ChM, plans to one day teach and inspire the next generation of performers, academics, and church musicians. A native of Bloomington, Illinois, he is currently pursuing a DMA degree in organ performance and literature at the Eastman School of Music, where he studies with David Higgs and serves as a teaching assistant in music theory and aural skills. Andrew previously earned an MM degree and a graduate performance diploma from the Peabody Conservatory, where he studied with Daniel Aune and was a graduate assistant in ear training. He earned a BM degree, summa cum laude, from Illinois Wesleyan University, studying organ with Susan Klotzbach and voice and choral conducting with J. Scott Ferguson. Additional private organ study has been with John Walker, Marie-Louise Langlais, and Jean-Baptiste Robin.
Andrew is assistant organist at Christ Church (Episcopal) in Rochester, New York, following tenures as organist and choirmaster at Mount Calvary Catholic Church in Baltimore, Maryland, and organist and choir director at Wesley United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Illinois.
An active member of the American Guild of Organists (AGO), Andrew serves as chair of the National Committee for Career Development and Support and earned the 2023 S. Lewis Elmer Award. His research has been published in The American Organist and The Tracker magazines and his competition credits include earning second place in the Sursa American Organ Competition (2022), first place in the inaugural James M. Weaver Prize in Organ Scholarship (2023), and being a finalist in the AGO National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance (2024).
Nicole Keller is in demand as a concert artist, adjudicator, and clinician. She has concertized in the States and abroad in venues such as St. Patrick Cathedral, New York; Cathédrale Notre-Dame, Paris; Dom St. Stephan, Passau; St. Patrick Cathedral, Armagh, Northern Ireland; and The Kazakh National University for the Arts, Astana, Kazakhstan. She specializes in eclectic programs suited to instrument and audience with a desire to expand the listener’s horizons, pairing familiar sounds and genres with less familiar ones.
Ms. Keller’s performances with orchestras include concertos, works for small chamber orchestra, and large works involving organ, harpsichord, and piano. She has extensive experience as a chamber musician and as a continuo player, including many performances of Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Christmas Oratorio, and the Mass in B minor in addition to a host of cantatas and baroque chamber music.
As a teacher, Ms. Keller strives to foster and model a commitment to excellence in performance, scholarship and self-growth as students deepen their love of music and their instrument. Her students have been accepted into and attended prestigious graduate schools throughout the country and enjoy successful musical careers in a variety of settings. She was recently appointed to the faculty of the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of Michigan and is also Visiting Instructor of Organ at the Interlochen Arts Academy.
Ms. Keller’s extensive church music experience includes work in with volunteer and professional choirs and instrumental ensembles devoted to the highest level of music for worship. She has created organ and choral scholar programs at small and mid size parishes, developed successful children’s choir programs, and has led choirs on tour in the states and abroad including choral residencies at Bristol Cathedral, U.K. and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.
Ms. Keller received the Performer’s Certificate and the Master of Music Degree in Organ Performance and Literature at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York under the tutelage of David Higgs. While at Eastman, she studied continuo with Arthur Haas and improvisation with Gerre Hancock. She received the Bachelor of Music Degree in Piano Performance from the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music in Berea, Ohio, where she studied piano with George Cherry and Jean Stell and organ with Margaret Scharf.
Stephen Kennedy is Director of Music and Organist of Christ Church Rochester, Instructor of Sacred Music at the Eastman School of Music, and Instructor of Organ for Eastman’s Community Music School. In 1997, he founded the Christ Church Schola Cantorum to perform the Office of Compline each Sunday at Christ Church. This acclaimed ensemble of voices and Renaissance instruments specializes in the performance of Plainsong, motets of the Renaissance and Romantic eras, as well as contemporary music and improvisation. The group has been featured in various national radio broadcasts, appeared in international festivals and concerts, and collaborated with ensembles such as the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble, and Ensemble Weser-Renaissance Bremen. The Schola has recorded for the Arsis and Loft labels.
Stephen has appeared as organ soloist in programs of standard repertoire as well as recitals consisting solely of improvisations. He has performed and lectured for local and regional events of the American Guild of Organists, and has given workshops on choral music, chant, and improvisation in the U.S. and abroad. His compositions have been performed internationally by leading performers in their field. He has also designed aleatoric silent film accompaniments and interdisciplinary performance art. He has created dance accompaniments such as “Luma Voce”, a dance score of computer-manipulated voice sounds with an overlay of vocal improvisation for the New York City debut of the Rochester City Ballet.
Nathan Laube is a leading performer and pedagogue who is beloved around the world. His extensive recital career includes major venues spanning four continents, with appearances at the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Maison Radio France in Paris, Auditorium Maurice Ravel in Lyon, Béla Bartók National Concert Hall in Budapest, the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, and the Sejong Center in Seoul. Highlight performances in the USA include Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; Verizon Hall, Philadelphia; Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco; The Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas TX; Benaroya Hall, Seattle; the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville, TN; the Kauffman Center in Kansas City, MO; and Spivey Hall in Morrow, GA. He has performed in the most famous churches and cathedrals of Europe, including Notre-Dame Cathedral and Saint-Sulpice in Paris, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the Frauenkirche in Dresden, and the Berlin Dom. In 2017 he was chosen as the first Organist in Residence at the celebrated 1738 Christian Müller Organ of the St.-Bavokerk in Haarlem (NL). In August 2022 he performed a solo organ recital for the prestigious BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall in London.
He is regularly called upon to inaugurate important organs across the world, including Canterbury Cathedral (UK) and King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (UK), York Minster (UK) Moscow’s new Zaryadye Concert Hall (RU), the Concert Hall in Göteborg (SE), and the Musiikkitalo in Helsinki (FI). In 2020 he had the honor of performing the first solo recital on Austria’s largest pipe organ built by the Rieger at St. Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephansdom) in Vienna, and in 2023 in the Cathedral in Graz. In the USA, dedications have included the new C.B. Fisk organ at The Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral in Raleigh, NC, the new Noack at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Birmingham, AL, and the restored Aeolian-Skinner at Northrop Auditorium at University of Minnesota. Passionate about organ design and aesthetics, he also serves as a consultant for new instruments in venues including the Concert Hall in Göteborg, Sweden, Field Hall at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, the American Cathedral in Paris, among many others.
Mr. Laube is a regular guest at notable music festivals around the world as a performer and pedagogue: the Berlin Orgelsommer (DE), the Stuttgart Internationaler Orgelsommer (DE), the Naumburg Orgelsommer (DE), the Silberman-Tage Festival in Freiberg (DE), the Dresden Music Festival (DE), the Hamburg International Music Festival (DE), the International Organ Festival Haarlem (NL), the Bachfestival Dordrecht (NL), the Toulouse Les Orgues Festival (FR), the Orléans Organ Festival (FR), Bordeaux Festival d’Été (FR), the Odense International Organ Festival (DK), the Lapua Festival (FI), the Lahti Organ Festival (FI), the Smarano Organ Academy (IT), the Göteborg International Organ Festival and Academy (SE), the Stockholm OrganSpace Festival (SE), the Bergen Summer Organ Festival (NO), the Max Reger Foundation of America’s 2015 Max Reger Festival (USA), and the WFMT Bach Project in Chicago (USA).
Mr. Laube has two CD recordings available: the Stephen Paulus Grand Concerto on the Naxos label recorded with the Nashville Symphony, Giancarlo Guerrero, conducting, for which the Nashville Symphony received a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Compendium; and a solo recital recording on the Ambiente label recorded at the Stadtkirche in Nagold, Germany. He has collaborated with solo artists including Andreas Ottensamer, principal clarinet with the Berliner Philharmoniker; Christopher Martin, principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic; and violinist Rachel Barton Pine. Many of Mr. Laube’s live performances have been featured on American Public Media’s “Pipedreams.”
In April 2019, Mr. Laube launched the documentary-style radio program, “All the Stops,” on the WFMT Radio Network Chicago, consisting of four two-hour programs which feature many of the world’s most famous organs in Europe and the United States and explore their unique histories and repertoire.
Mr. Laube is currently Associate Professor of Organ at the Eastman School of Music. Laube previously taught at Eastman from 2013 to 2020, and then from 2020-2022 taught on the organ faculty at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, where he succeeded his mentor, Ludger Lohmann. Since 2018 Laube additionally holds the post of the International Consultant in Organ Studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK. He is frequently asked to sit on the juries for important international organ competitions, including the 2021 Gottfried Silbermann International Competition in Freiberg (DE), the Martini International Organ Competition in Groningen (NL) in 2022, and the Concours International Olivier Messiaen in Lyon (FR) in 2022.
Mr. Laube is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Alan Morrison. The recipient of a William Fulbright fellowship, he continued his studies at the Conservatoire Rayonnement Régional in Toulouse with Michel Bouvard and Jan Willem Jansen. He received his Masters at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, Germany, where he studied with Ludger Lohmann, under the auspices of a DAAD Grant.
Alexander Little is a doctoral student of Prof. Higgs at the Eastman School of Music. Born and raised in the U.K., he was a chorister at Norwich Cathedral before studying at Merton College, Oxford, where he completed his undergraduate degree in music and a master’s degree in musicology. At Merton he was organ scholar then assistant organist, accompanying the college’s two choirs in services, CD recordings, and radio broadcasts, as well as international tours in Europe, North America, and Asia. While at Oxford, Alex studied organ with William Whitehead, and also traveled to Copenhagen and Lund, Sweden, to study with renowned Swedish organist Hans Fagius with a grant from the Royal Philharmonic Society.
Alex’s competition successes include First Prize at the 2023 Lynnwood Farnam Organ Competition in Montreal, Second Prize in the 2022 International Buxtehude Competition in Lübeck, and Third Prize at the Northern Ireland International Organ Competition in Amargh in 2018. In Rochester, he is currently Director of Music at St. Anne’s Catholic Church, having previously held the position of Assistant Organist at Christ Church Episcopal. He is currently completing a doctoral research project on the subject of quarter-comma meantone temperament and its effect on compositional style in seventeenth-century North Germany.
In increasing demand as a recitalist in the USA and abroad, Mitchell Miller has garnered prizes in many international competitions, chief among them a prize for “Best Overall Interpretation” in the St. Alban’s International Organ Competition 2021. This, along with a first prize in the 2018 Concours d’Orgue “Pierre du Manchicourt” in St. Omer, France, and a second prize in the 2019 Joseph Gabler Organ Competition in Ochsenhausen, Germany, has led Mitchell to perform in over 10 countries in Europe and North America.
After receiving the prestigious William J. Fulbright Research Grant in 2017, Mitchell completed both a Masters degree in Organ (2019) in the class of Ludger Lohmann as well as a Masters in Historical Keyboard Instruments (2020) in the combined classes of Prof. Lohmann and Prof. Jörg Halubek at the HMDK Stuttgart in Stuttgart, Germany. Likewise at the HMDK Stuttgart, he completed a Konzertexam certificate in the class of Prof. Nathan Laube in 2022, graduating with highest honors. He is currently a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate at the Eastman School of Music in the class of Nathan Laube.
Mitchell serves as the Minister of Music at Church of the Ascension (Episcopal) in Rochester, New York. Previously he has served as Visiting Organist and Choirmaster of Calvary Episcopal Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and before returning to the United States served as the Organ Scholar of the American Cathedral in Paris.
Parallel to his musical activities, Mitchell has fostered a passion for wine, particularly for the wines of Germany and France. In 2021 and 2022, he earned his Level 2 and Level 3 Award in Wines from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET), one of the most well-respected certifying bodies in the beverage industry.
Jonathan Ortloff, founder and president of Ortloff Organ Company, graduated from the Eastman School of Music and University of Rochester with degrees in organ performance and engineering, studying with David Higgs, Bill Porter, and Hans Davidsson. His firm, founded in 2014 in Boston, has built three new pipe organs, is building a fourth at present, and has been involved in three major restoration projects of Skinner and Wurlitzer organs.
He has lectured at EROI and OHS conventions and has written for The American Organist, The Tracker, Theatre Organ, and the ISO Journal of the International Society of Organbuilders, usually on topics surrounding early 20th-century American organbuilding, specifically the work of Hope-Jones and Wurlitzer. He serves on the board of the ISO, the OHS Publications Advisory Committee, and is chair of the OHS Historic Pipe Organ Registry Review Panel.
Jonathan was the winner of the 2008 American Theatre Organ Society’s Young Theatre Organist Competition, and has performed throughout North American on both theater and classical organs. He served as Associate Organist and Choirmaster pro tempore at Boston’s famed Church of the Advent from 2015-2016, helping to oversee the Advent’s all-professional choir, and playing on the landmark 1936 Aeolian-Skinner organ, Opus 940.
Paul Peeters studied musicology at Utrecht University, where his primary teachers for the organ were Prof. Dr. Maarten Albert Vente and Dr. Jan van Biezen. He studied organ with Kees van Houten and Jacques van Oortmerssen, and attended courses with Klaas Bolt, Harald Vogel, and Jean-Claude Zehnder. From 1983 to 1991 he was the editor-in-chief of the Dutch organ journal Het Orgel. In 1995 he was appointed librarian
and coordinator of the documentation at the Göteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt) at the University of Gothenburg and from 2004 to 2007 he served GOArt as its director. He has taught organ building history at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg, from 2008 to 2021 and was the project leader of the Göteborg International Organ Academy from 2008 to 2017. He is a member of the editorial committee of the
Swedish journal Orgelforum and is completing a doctoral dissertation French and German Organ Building in the 19th Century. The Tonal Designs of Cavaillé-Coll and Walcker – A Comparative Study. From its foundation in 1990 until 2013, he was a board member of the ‘International Association of Organ Documentation’ (IAOD), serving as its chairman from 2006 to 2013. From 2016 to 2023 he was the editor of The Organ Yearbook and since 2018, he has been a board member of the foundation Utrechts Orgelarchief M.A. Vente.
Widely known as a performer in the United States and in Europe, William Porter has also achieved international recognition for his skill in improvisation in a wide variety of styles, ancient and modern. He has performed at major international festivals and academies, including the North German Organ Academy, the Italian Academy of Music for the Organ, the Smarano Organ and Clavichord Academy, Organfestival Holland, the Göteborg International Organ Academy, the Dollart Festival, the Lausanne Improvisation Festival, the Festival Toulouse les Orgues, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the McGill International Organ Academy, Eastman’s Improvfest, and the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists.
Professor of Organ, Harpsichord, and Improvisation at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, from 2002 until his retirement in 2013, he has also been a member of the music faculty at McGill University in Montreal, where he lived from 2004 until fall of 2015. From 1985 to 2002 he taught organ, music history, and music theory at the New England Conservatory in Boston, and from 2001 until 2005 he taught improvisation at Yale University. Porter holds degrees from Oberlin College, where he also taught organ and harpsichord from 1974 to 1986, and from Yale University.
He has recorded on historic instruments, old and new, for the Gasparo, Proprius, BMG, and Loft labels. Now residing in Rochester, New York, he has returned to the Eastman School of Music as Adjunct Professor of Organ.
As a professor of music and university organist at Cornell University, Annette Richards is a performer, writer, and teacher. Laureate of international organ competitions at Dublin and Bruges, she is frequently invited to play and teach on recital series and at festivals and academies in North America and Europe, and she is a regular member of the faculty at the Gothenburg International Organ Academy. Among her CDs are the Complete Works of Melchior Schildt (on the Loft label) played on the historic organ at Roskilde Cathedral, Denmark; and her recording of music from the library of Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, recorded on Cornell’s Schnitger-style organ by Munetaka Yokota and GOArt. Her repertoire stretches from the earliest music for the organ to works composed just yesterday, and she performs on original instruments from all periods of the organ’s long history.
Annette was educated at Oxford University, (BA, MA) Stanford University (PhD) and the Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam (Performer’s Diploma, Uitvoerend Musicus), where she was a student of Jacques van Oortmerssen. She has won numerous honors, including fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Getty Center in Santa Monica and from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. From 2007 to 2018 she was the Executive Director of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, and won a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the Westfield Center at Cornell. In 2011 she celebrated the completion of an early 18th-century-style organ at Cornell, the culmination of an ambitious 10-year research and construction project she led in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and in upstate New York. She has since founded the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, and curates programming around a world-class collection of early keyboard instruments.
Annette is founding editor of Keyboard Perspectives, a yearbook dedicated to historical performance and keyboard culture, but her scholarly work extends far beyond the organ and its music. Her book The Free Fantasia and the Musical Picturesque (Cambridge, 2001) explores intersections between musical fantasy (especially the music of C. P. E. Bach) and the aesthetics of the landscape garden in late 18th- and early 19th-century music across German-speaking Europe and England. She is also editor of C. P. E Bach Studies (Cambridge, 2006) and rediscovered and reconstructed that composer’s extraordinary collection of musical portraits, published by the Packard Humanities Institute in 2012. With David Yearsley she has edited the organ works of C. P. E. Bach for the C. P. E. Bach: Complete Works edition, and in 2023 she published The Temple of Fame and Friendship: Portraits, Music and History in the C. P. E. Bach Circle (Chicago). She has published essays on Handel and charity, Mozart and mechanical music, Haydn and the grotesque, the glass harmonica and ghost music, and she is currently completing a book on the musical gothic, entitled Music on the Dark Side of 1800. Annette is the Given Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Cornell.
Dr. Caroline Robinson is an organist, pedagogue, church musician, and music collaborator who has been featured in performance across the United States. Robinson joined the Department of Organ at the University of Michigan as an assistant professor in the fall of 2024. In addition to her numerous US performances, Robinson has performed internationally in England, Denmark, France, and Germany. Her playing has been broadcast multiple times on American Public Media’s Pipedreams, Pipedreams LIVE!, and Philadelphia- based public radio station WRTI’s Wanamaker Organ Hour. She has been a featured performer at conventions of the Organ Historical Society, the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival, and the American Guild of Organists (AGO). She performed on the closing concert at the 2022 National AGO Convention in Seattle, collaborating with Seattle Pro Musica on choral and organ works including James MacMillan’s Cantos Sagrados. Her performances in 2024-2025 will take her to the Gulangyu Organ Museum in Gulangyu, China; the West Point Cadet Chapel; the Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, OR; and St. Paul’s Cathedral, Pittsburgh. She will give masterclasses in Haddonfield, NJ and Seattle, WA. Robinson is a laureate of the National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance (NYACOP), held as part of the 2018 AGO convention in Kansas City. She holds first prize from the 11th annual Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival in 2008 and from the 10th annual West Chester University Organ Competition in 2010. She was a semifinalist in the 2014 Dublin International Organ Competition. In 2016, she was chosen as one of The Diapason’s “20 Under 30” promising young organists in the United States. Previously, Robinson held the post of organist and associate choirmaster at the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta. She is an active continuo player with early music ensembles, having performed at the Rochester Early Music Festival, San Francisco’s American Bach Soloists Academy, and most recently with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra. She is represented as a solo recitalist in North America by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc. Robinson completed her undergraduate work at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with Alan Morrison. Aided by a grant from the J. William Fulbright fellowship fund, she studied at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Toulouse with Michel Bouvard and Jan Willem Jansen (organ) and Yasuko Bouvard (harpsichord). Robinson holds the doctor of musical arts and the master of music in organ performance and literature degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with David Higgs. Robinson also received the performer’s certificate and the advanced teaching certificate in theory pedagogy from Eastman.
Kerala J. Snyder is Professor Emerita of Musicology and Affiliate Faculty of Organ, Sacred Music, and Historical Keyboards at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester. She has also taught at Yale University and the Hartt School of Music, worked as Senior Researcher at the Göteborg Organ Art Center, and served as organist at a number of churches. She studied at Wellesley College, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale University, where she received the Ph.D. in Music History. She is widely acknowledged as a leading expert in German baroque music, particularly the music of Dieterich Buxtehude. For her work in this area she received the Buxtehude Prize from the city of Lübeck, Germany, was made an honorary member of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music and the American Bach Society, and received an honorary doctorate from Gothenburg University in Sweden and a medal from the Royal College of Organists in Great Britain. Among her publications are the books Dieterich Buxtehude: Organist in Lübeck (its second edition translated into German as Dieterich Buxtehude: Leben, Werk, Aufführungspraxis); The Organ as a Mirror of its Time: North European Reflections, 1610-2000; and The Organist as Scholar: Essays in Memory of Russell Saunders; as well as numerous articles in journals and in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Leaping from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, she served as founding Editor-in-Chief of the on-line Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music from 1995 to 2003, is co-editor of the on-line Düben Collection Database Catalogue at Uppsala University, and compiled The Choir Library of St. Mary’s in Lübeck, 1546-1674: A Database Catalogue.
Augustine Sobeng is a native of Shama, in the Western Region of Ghana. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Medical Laboratory Technology in 2014 from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (K.N.U.S.T) in Kumasi, Ghana. He studied for his Masters in Organ Performance under a VPA Fellowship award, in the studio of Dr. Annie Laver, at Syracuse University between 2019 and 2021. Augustine is currently pursuing his Doctoral program in Organ Performance and Literature, in the studio of Nathan Laube, at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester University. He is the organ scholar at St. Paul’s Episcopal church, Rochester.
In May 2021, he won first prize in the ‘solo instrumental work’ category for the Setnor Outstanding Artists’ Competition at Syracuse University. Augustine was named to The Diapason’s 2021 class of 20 under 30. In May 2021, he won first prize in the ‘solo instrumental work’ category for the Setnor Outstanding Artists’ Competition at Syracuse University. In 2024 he was awarded the James B. Cochran Award for his outstanding DMA recital.
A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Russell Weismann is Director of Chapel Music and Associate Faculty in the Department of Performing Arts at Georgetown University. He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from George Mason University, where his dissertation research explored the North American influence of the pioneering 20th-century German organ builder Rudolf von Beckerath. An active member of the American Guild of Organists, Russell is currently the National Councillor for Education, where he oversees the all educational initiatives of the Guild to meet the instructional and professional needs of organists of all ages and abilities.
David Yearsley’s keyboarding ranges from J. S. Bach’s organ trio sonatas, a musical portrait of J. S. Bach and three of his sons, work with the indie rocker Power Dove, as well as many projects from over twenty-five years with the pioneering synthesizer trio Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company. Just released from False Azure Records is his Handel’s Organ Banquet. Another recording, with baroque violinist Martin Davids, In the Cabinet of Wonders with Schop and Scheidemann, is due out from the same label in January. Yearsley is author of the widely praised Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Bach’s Feet: The Organ Pedals in European Culture (Cambridge, 2012), which received the Ogasapian Book Award from the Organ Historical Society. Sex, Death and Minuets: Anna Magdalena Bach and Her Musical Notebooks was named one of the best books on music for 2019 by the Financial Times. Yearsley’s many honors as an organist include all major prizes at the Bruges Early Music Festival. He has been an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin, a Wenner-Gren Foundation Fellow at the University of Gothenburg, and recipient of an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and, most recently, a Guggenheim fellowship. For more than thirty years he was music critic for the essential country broadsheet the Anderson Valley Advertiser, America’s last newspaper; his weekly column on topics ranging from Bach to Beyoncé can still be read each Friday at counterpunch.org. He lives in Ithaca, New York and teaches at Cornell University where he is the Herbert Gussman Professor of Music.
Daniel Zager is retired from the Eastman School of Music, where he served for twenty-one years as associate dean and head of the Sibley Music Library and as associate professor of music, teaching sacred music courses in both the musicology and organ departments. He holds the BMus degree in organ performance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the PhD in musicology from the University of Minnesota. His most recent publications include Lutheran Music and Meaning (Concordia, 2023) and two chapters in A New Song We Now Begin: Celebrating the Half Millennium of Lutheran Hymnals 1524–2024, ed. Robin A. Leaver
(Fortress, 2024).