Organist’s Spectacular will be held on Sunday, October 19th at 7:00 PM at The Cathedral of St. John, 271 North Main Street, Providence. Featured organists will include Brink Bush, Director of Music at The Cathedral of St. John, Peter Krasinski of Boston and Diana Norton-Jackson of Kingston. There will be a reception in Synod Hall following the program. Please plan to join us for this celebration. Donations given will go to the maintenance of the organ at the Cathedral.
Organist’s Spectacular is a celebration of the International Year of the Organ. Throughout the United States and Canada this year, there will be an organ recital in every major city on October 19th. Organ works performed will include pieces by J. S. Bach, Edward Elgar, Charles Marie Widor and Louis Vierne as well as women composers, Roberta Bittgood, Martha Sobaje, Diana Norton-Jackson and Lani Smith.
About the Performers
Brink Bush has been Director of Music and Choirmaster at The Cathedral of St. John since 2007. He is one of the leading interpreters of German Romantic organ music in the world today. He has performed through out the United States and Germany and made his German debut at the Berliner Dom in August, 2001. His Pipedreams debut entitle "Bach Bush and Middelschulte" aired September 2005 on National Public Radio and his New York debut took place at Trinity Church Wall St. for the "Virgil Fox Legacy Twenty-fifth Anniversary Concert Weekend," October 2005.Brink Bush studied organ at Peabody Institute, the Juilliard School, and the Eastman School of Music. His principle teachers include McNeil Robinson, Robert Elmore, Rosalyn Tureck, David Craighead, and Russell Saunders. He specializes in the German Romantic repertoire, especially the works of Gerard Bunk, Felix Mendelssohn, Wilhelm Middelschulte, Max Reger, Gerard Strecke and Ludwig Thiele. He has been sponsored by the Middelschulte family for three consecutive trips to Germany for his research on Wilhelm Middelschulte. In February 2000 and November 2002, Mr. Bush was invited to Yale University to give a lecture on the "Life and Works of Wilhelm Middelschulte." His first compact disc Volume 1 of the Complete Works of Wilhelm Middelschulte was released in October of 1999. His article on Wilhelm Middelschulte has been published by the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2000. He is the editor of "The Innermost Secrets" by T. Ernest Nichols, 2005, a book about the Virgil Fox technique, and is the primary contributor to the new Complete Organ Works of Middelschulte published by Barenreiter, 2007.
Peter Edwin Krasinski is a conductor, organist, and music educator that has consistently led meaningful worship services throughout his church music career. Mr. Krasinski’s imaginative performances elevate and inform diverse audiences. Well respected in both the secular and sacred genres of his field, he has taught the enchantment of music to both public and private institutions in the greater Boston area for over twenty years. His Bach playing has been hailed in print as "sublimely spiritual" and his improvisations have been critically acclaimed in the press as "stunning", "seamless", and “brilliant”.In 2002 he won first prize in Improvisation in the American Guild of Organists National Competition in Philadelphia. and was subsequently named as a judge for the competition and featured improvisure for the 2004 AGO national convention in Los Angels. He is currently Director of Choral Arts at Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill and Artistic Director of Youth pro Musica, the Greater Boston Youth Chorus. He is organist at First Church of Christ, Scientist in Providence Rhode Island and Beth El Temple Center Synagogue in Belmont Massachusetts. He holds both a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education and Organ Performance, and the Master of Sacred Music degree from Boston University
Diana Norton-Jackson has a Bachelor's degree in organ from Stetson University, where she studied with Paul Jenkins, and a Master's degree in conducting from the University of Georgia. She did a further year of graduate work at the Institute of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she studied with Leonard Raver, organist of the New York Philharmonic. As a recitalist, she has performed extensively in New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Florida, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. She is a former Dean of the RI Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. In Rhode Island she has been organist/choirmaster at the First Baptist Church of East Greenwich, Saint Mary's Episcopal Church in Warwick, the Kingston Congregational Church, and Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Newport, as well as an instructor-accompanist at the University of Rhode Island. Most recently, she was the interim organist/choirmaster of Trinity Church, Newport. She has given several recent recitals in Rhode Island and also at the First Reformed Episcopal Church in New York City, Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral, Houston, Texas, and the Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.
