St. John’s Organ Society is pleased to announce the 24th Summer Recital Series on Maine’s largest 19th-Century tracker-action pipe organ, E. & G. G. Hook’s magnificent Opus 288, at St. John’s Roman Catholic Church in Bangor.
These hour-long recitals occur on Thursday evenings at 7:30. St. John’s Catholic Church is located at 207 York Street in Bangor. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.
St. John’s Organ Society Summer Series 2016 presents a special pre-season opportunity…
Magnificat! Tuesday, July 26—7:30 pm
Weckmann: Dialogue— The Angel
Gabriel Appears to Mary
Bach: Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten! BWV 172
Bach/Ernst: Concerto for Organ in G Major, BWV 592
Bach: Magnificat in Eb, BWV 243a
Presented by Blue Hill Bach and St. John’s Organ Society
The audience is invited to take part in creating Blue Hill Bach’s debut video recording, to be produced live at St. John’s under the direction of conductor, John Finney, and Blue Hill Bach Artistic Director, Stephen Hammer.
July 28
Zhen Piao
(Champaign, Illinois and Shenyang, China)
The first concert is July 28 and features Zhen Piao from Champaign, Illinois and Shenyang, China. He is performing music of J. S. Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann.
Piao studied at the University of Illinois where he earned a Master of Music in Piano Performance and Literature studying with William Heiles, and an Artist Diploma in Organ studying with Dana Robinson. He received the Brownson Fellowship. Recently, he played recitals in the Chapel of Saint John the Divine and Grace Lutheran church (Champaign, Illinois). He plays the organ for weekly services at Bethany Park Christian Church and plans to pursue a DMA in Organ Performance and Literature.
August 4
Gayle h. Martin with Linda Pearse, bass trombone & sackbut
(Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada)
The August 4 concert features Gayle h. Martin with Linda Pearse, bass trombone and sackbut from Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada. They will perform music of Giovanni Cesare, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Vincent Lubeck, J.S. Bach, and Alexandre Guilmant.
Gayle h. Martin is University Organist and Associate Professor of Music at Mount Allison University, in New Brunswick Canada where she teaches organ performance, choral conducting, music history, musicianship and directs the choral ensembles. Martin’s passion for music, animals and nature began in the pastoral countryside of Vermont and continue in New Brunswick.
She holds degrees from the Crane School of Music (B.Mus), McGill University (M.Mus) and the University of Alberta (DMus). Martin was organist at the American Cathedral in Paris. While in Paris, she received a premier prix à unanimité from the Conservatoire de Rueil Malmaison, studying under the tutelage of renowned organists Jean Langlais and Susan Landale. She can be heard on numerous recordings, including her solo CD’s Prism (1998), Celtic Impressions (2005), and Partners in Time (2015). Martin has been accompanist for several choral groups and plays continuo with the reknowned early music ensemble, ¡Sacabuche!.
Linda Pearse is Associate Professor of Music at Mount Allison University and Lecturer on Baroque trombone at Indiana University Bloomington.
Pearse is the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Early Music Summer Baroque Workshop, the Sackville Festival of Early Music and of the early music ensemble ¡Sacabuche! With ¡Sacabuche!, she has recently released an album of 17th-century Italian Motets on the ATMA Classique label. In addition to music-only programs, Pearse’s interdisciplinary projects engage new music, early music, texts, soundscapes, and images in conversations that explore cultural contacts and collisions in the early modern period. Her critical edition of Seventeenth-Century Italian Motets with Trombone is published with A-R Editions (April 2014).
August 11
Jacques Boucher with Sophie Poulin de Courval, saxophone
(Montreal, Canada)
The August 11 concert features Jacques Boucher with Sophie Poulin de Courval, saxophone, from Montreal, Canada. They will perform music of Jean-Baptiste Singelée, Denis Bédard, and Olivier Messian.
Jacques Boucher is an organist, a broadcaster, a church musician, and a music professor. He is featured in many recordings and has given concerts in Canada, Europe, the United States, Bermuda, Mexico, and South America. In Montréal, Boucher is principal organist of the Sanctuaire du Saint-Sacrement and the titular organist of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste church, which contains Casavant Frères’ Opus 615.
Sophie Poulin de Courval is an active chamber musician who has played concerts in Canada, the United-States, Romania, Italy, and France. She is the titular saxophone teacher at the music school in Rivière-du-Loup.
Boucher and Poulin de Courval have been working together since 2003. Wishing to share all the potential of the unusual sound mix created by the colors of the saxophone and organ, they have performed in Québec, New Brunswick and France at a growing number of concert venues. They recorded two CDs, released in 2012, on five different organs in the Kamouraska region of Québec.
August 18
Douglas Beck
(Bangor, Maine)
The August 18 program features Douglas Beck from Bangor, Maine performing music of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, William Byrd and Josef Rheinberger.
Beck enjoys creating and inspiring the creative and spiritual work of others in Maine’s close-knit local and regional communities while linking that work to daily living. He enjoys his work with music students in his Bangor studio and as a faculty member of the Ellsworth Community Music Institute. He enjoys his working relationships with musicians and visual artists as well as spiritual seekers of all ages. Beck serves as Accompanist with the Bagaduce Chorale and Artistic Director of the Bangor Community Chorus. He has served the Bangor Chapter of the American Guild of Organists as a member of the Executive Committee and recently completed a term as Chapter Dean. Beck holds degrees in Organ Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University. Before moving to Maine, Beck lived in the Washington D.C. area for seventeen years, where he was the Assistant Organist-Choirmaster at Historic Christ Church and then the Organist-Choirmaster at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, both in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. He also served on the Adjunct Faculty at Virginia Theological Seminary. Additionally, Beck is an Oblate in the Order of Julian of Norwich (a recognized monastic order of the Episcopal Church, US). He is also a Master of Divinity student at Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
August 25
Kevin Birch
with Scott Burditt, horn
(Bangor, Maine)
The August 25 concert features Kevin Birch with Scott Burditt, horn, from Bangor, Maine. They will perform music of J. S. Bach, Franz Joseph Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Kevin Birch holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Iowa with previous studies at New England Conservatory in Boston and the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. Since 1992 he has served as Director of Music at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, Maine He is a member of the music faculty at the University of Maine’s School of the Performing Arts in Orono and serves on the Liturgical Commission for the Diocese of Portland.
Maine native Scott Burditt, the Band Director at Bangor High School, has been a public and private school music teacher for more than 35 years, working with students from grade 3 through college. He is the Principal Horn and Personnel Manager for the Bangor Symphony, and is the Associate Conductor of the Bangor Band. As a professional horn player, he has played with most of the performing groups in Maine, including the Portland and Bangor Symphonies, college orchestras, brass and woodwind quintets and community bands.
We are grateful to our partner hotel, the Charles Inn.
