Providing Summer Organ Concerts, Educational Tours, and Community Outreach since 1992.
Concert organist, Loreto Aramendi, will perform music of Buxtehude, Alain, Liszt, Franck, Messiaen, and Duruflé on the historic organ at St. John’s Catholic Church (207 York St., Bangor). Aramendi is the organist of the Cavaillé-Coll organ (1863) of the Basilique of Santa María del Coro in San Sebastian, Spain.
August 31: Kevin Birch (Bangor, ME)
Kevin Birch (Bangor, Maine) will play music of Louis Marchand, Johann Sebastian Bach, and César Franck as part of St. John’s Organ Society's 30th Summer Recital Series. Birch serves as Director of Music at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, Maine where he also serves as Executive Director of St. John’s Organ Society.
Featuring gifted artists playing Maine’s largest 19th-Century mechanical-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.
August 24: Mary-Katherine Fletcher (Boston, MA)
Mary-Katherine Fletcher (Boston, MA) performs music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, and César Franck as part of St. John’s Organ Society's 30th Summer Recital Series. Fletcher is the director of music and organist at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Acushnet, MA.
Featuring gifted artists playing Maine’s largest 19th-Century mechanical-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.
August 17: Abraham Ross (Montreal, QC)
Abraham Ross (Montreal, QC) performs music of Charles Ives, J. K. Paine, G. E. Whiting, and Florence Price as part of St. John’s Organ Society's 30th Summer Recital Series. Ross enjoys an active career as a concert organist, harpsichordist, and director, presenting imaginative programmes informed by the most recent research on performance practice, technology, and musicological context.
Featuring gifted artists playing Maine’s largest 19th-Century mechanical-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.
August 10: Paul Griffin (organ) and Sophia Anastasi Griffin (soprano) (Washington, DC)
Paul Griffin (organ) and Sophia Anastasi Griffin (soprano) (Washington, DC) performing music of J. S. Bach, Louis Vierne, and Giacomo Puccini as part of St. John’s Organ Society's 30th Summer Recital Series. Paul now serves St. Peter School in Capitol Hill D.C. as Music Teacher/Director of Choirs and The Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land as organist. Sophia is a professional vocalist based in Washington, DC.
Featuring gifted artists playing Maine’s largest 19th-Century mechanical-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.
August 3: Rosalind Mohnsen (Boston, MA)
Rosalind Mohnsen (Malden, MA) performs works of Dudley Buck, Horatio Parker, and Florence Price as part of St. John’s Organ Society's 30th Summer Recital Series. She is Director of Music and Organist at Immaculate Conception Church of Malden/Medford, Massachusetts.
Featuring gifted artists playing Maine’s largest 19th-Century mechanical-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.
July 27: Joshua Ehlebracht (New Haven, CT)
Joshua Ehlebracht (New Haven, CT) performing works of J. Nicolaus Bruhns, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker as part of St. John’s Organ Society's 30th Summer Recital Series.
Ehlebracht recently received his master’s degree in organ performance from the Yale School of Music.
Featuring gifted artists playing Maine’s largest 19th-Century mechanical-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.
On August 25th, Daniel Pyle and flautist Catherine Bull (Bar Harbor, ME) bring the music of Gabriel Faure, Jehan Alain, Cesar Franck, and J.S. Bach.
Daniel Pyle is organist/music-director at St. Saviour’s Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor, artistic-director of the Acadia Choral Society, and harpsichordist and leader of the Baroque ensemble Harmonie Universelle. He has also conducted the annual performance of Handel’s Messiah for Blue Hill Bach in 2018 and 2019, and for the Congress of the International Viola d’amore Society in 2016, 2018, and 2022. He was a student of Warren Hutton at the University of Alabama, of Gustav Leonhardt and Hans van Nieuwkoop at the Sweelinck Conservatorium of Amsterdam, and holds a doctoral degree from the Eastman School of Music.
Catherine Bull maintains an active career in both modern and historical flutes. She is the flutist in the ensemble Harmonie Universelle, and for 20 years was the principal flutist of the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, as well as principal for the Southern Crescent Symphony Orchestra in Atlanta. For the National Flute Association she has presented workshops and recitals, and chaired and adjudicated national competitions. Her performances have been heard in Europe, England, the United States, on NPR’s Performance Today, at the Early Music Festivals of Utrecht, Boston, and Berkeley, and at the International Low Flutes Festival (including her own composition). A degree-holder from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the New England Conservatory, she was a Rotary Fellow for study in Belgium, where her primary teacher was Wilbert Hazelzet of Musica Antiqua Köln, and was awarded a fellowship by the King Baudouin Foundation to study with Frank Theuns.
Our season finale (September 1) features Kevin Birch (Bangor, ME) playing music of Dudley Buck, Arthur Foote, and Robert Schumann. Birch began organ studies with Yuko Hayashi on the C. B. Fisk organ at Old West Church in 1979 and earned the Bachelor of Music Degree at New England Conservatory (with Distinction in Performance) in 1987. He continued studies with Klaas Bolt at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam and later with Delores Bruch at the University of Iowa where he earned the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. Since 1992 he has served as Director of Music at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, Maine where he also serves as Executive Director of St. John’s Organ Society – a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and stewardship of E. & G. G. Hook’s Opus 288 built for St. John’s Church in 1860. Kevin 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. He has performed solo recitals in the US, Canada, Europe, and South America, and for several national conventions of the Organ Historical Society. He is especially devoted to the many fine historic organs in Maine on which he enjoys frequent opportunities to study and perform.
Katherine Johnson (Oberlin, OH) performs music of Felix Mendelssohn, Florence Price, and Ethel Smyth on August 18. Johnson is a senior in the organ department at Oberlin Conservatory, where she studies with Christa Rakich. She is enrolled in Oberlin’s double degree program, studying Organ Performance and English. Katherine currently serves as Organist and Music Director at Church of the Redeemer in Lorain, OH. Prior to taking this position, Katherine worked as Organ Scholar at Plymouth Church UCC in Shaker Heights, and before beginning at Oberlin, as the Cathee Jean Huber Organ Scholar at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, NC. In 2016, Katherine was awarded the first prize in the high school division of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition, and subsequently performed on the Winner’s Recital at the 2017 Schweitzer Festival. She has participated in a number of other competitions in the southeastern U.S., including the Quimby Regional Competition for Young Organists, the Greater Columbia AGO Competition, and the 2014 ECMAEF competition in Greenville, N.C. Katherine spent the summer of 2019 working as Organ Teaching Assistant at Interlochen Arts Camp, with Thomas Bara. Her former teachers are Phil Valera, Samantha Koch, and Andrew Scanlon.
