Organ Academy
French Connections
Sunday, July 7-Saturday, July 13, 2024
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: APRIL 5
REGISTRATION STATUS: Open
This year's summer organ academy explores the vast repertory and influence of the French tradition of keyboard music. Studies will include music of the French "classique" on both harpsichord and organ as well as the grand romantic and twentieth-century tradition, represented on Oberlin's monumental Finney Chapel organ by C.B. Fisk, modeled after the instruments of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
This intensive, residential program offered to organists ages 13 - 25 (students under 15 years of age must be accompanied by a parent and live off-campus).
Sessions of daily lessons, master classes, sacred music skills, improvisation, harpsichord, clavichord, and preparation for college auditions and competitions are included in this week. Midweek the group tours organs and other sites in Cleveland, then off to Sandusky to Cedar Point Amusement Park!
Please note: All summer programs are subject to the College's public health and Obiesafe policies related to the COVID-19 pandemic. All participants agree to adhere to all College policy while participating in a summer program.
Jonathan William Moyer, David S. Boe Chair and Associate Professor of Organ specializes in a vast repertoire from the Renaissance to the 21st century and has performed throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Japan. professor of organ at Oberlin, Moyer also serves as organist of the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland and has been a visiting lecturer in organ at the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck, Germany. Recent concerts include Bachkirche (Arnstadt), St. Jakobikirche (Lübeck), Ludgerikirche (Norden), Laurenskerk (Alkmaar), Marktkirchethe (Hannover), the National Convention of the American Organ Historical Society (Rochester, N.Y.), the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, D.C.), St. Sulpice (Paris), Notre Dame de Bergerac, and J.S. Bach’s complete Clavierübung III at the German Reformed Church in Budapest. He has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, the Oberlin Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, Quire Cleveland, Concert Artists of Baltimore, and the Handel Choir of Baltimore.
Mark Edwards Associate Professor of Harpsichord, has presented solo recitals at numerous major festivals and series, among them the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Bozar, and the Montreal Baroque Festival and Clavecin en concert. He has performed concertos with ensembles including Il Gardellino, Neobarock, and Ensemble Caprice.
Angela Kraft Cross Visiting Guest Artist is based in the Bay Area of California. She graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music in 1980 with bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Organ Performance. She then earned her Doctor of Medicine degree at Loma Linda University, where she subsequently completed her residency in ophthalmology. In 1993, she completed her Master of Music degree in Piano Performance at the College of Notre Dame with Thomas LaRatta. Her organ teachers have included Louis Robilliard, Marie-Louise Langlais, Sandra Soderlund, S. Leslie Grow, William Porter, and Garth Peacock. She has studied composition with Pamela Decker.
Kraft Cross has performed extensively on both organ and piano, having given over five hundred concerts across the United States, in Canada, England, Holland, France, Hungary, Korea, Lesotho and Guam, including such venues as Notre Dame Cathedral, St. Sulpice and the Madeleine in Paris, Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Thomas Church in New York City, Methuen Memorial Music Hall and Trinity Church in Boston, E. Power Biggs’s organ at Harvard, and Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Southwark Cathedral in London.
Kraft Cross has released eight solo CD albums, recorded locally in California as well as in Paris, Lyon, and London. Three of her organ albums have received critical acclaim in The American Organist magazine. She has served as the organist of the Congregational Church of San Mateo since 1993 and is currently the Artist in Residence. She is also a regular organ recitalist at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.
In addition to her musical career, Kraft Cross retired in 2011 having worked for 22 years as an ophthalmic surgeon at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Redwood City and now volunteers as an ophthalmologist at Samaritan House in Redwood City. She is committed to the musical education of young people and since 1997 has been instrumental in organizing an annual Organ Camp for young pianists headquartered at her church. Kraft Cross is the founding director of the San Francisco Peninsula Organ Academy, a nonprofit organization formed in 2014 to support young concert organists with scholarships on short intensive overseas study trips.
Mitchell Miller Visiting Guest Artist, A native of Cincinnati, OH, Mitchell Miller is currently studying Konzertexam in the class of Prof. Nathan Laube at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart, where he recently completed a Master’s of Organ in the class of Prof. Dr. Ludger Lohmann and a Master’s of Historical Keyboard Instruments in the studios of Prof. Dr. Ludger Lohmann and Prof. Jörg Halubek. Before coming to Germany, Mitchell graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory with a Bachelor’s of Music in Organ Performance and a Bachelor’s of Arts in German. He studied organ with James David Christie, harpsichord and continuo with Webb Wiggins and Mark Edwards, and piano with Jonathan Moyer. Additionally, Mitchell studied clavichord with David Breitman in the spring of 2015, and with Oberlin’s Distinguished Visiting Professor of Organ, Marie-Louise Langlais, in the fall of 2012. Following a year studying in Stuttgart as a Fulbright Scholar, Mitchell was awarded a first prize in the 2018 Pierre du Manchicourt Organ Competition in St. Omer, France. Previously he has garnered such honors as receiving first prize in the 2017 Tuesday Musical Scholarship Competition and the 2017 Cleveland Chapter Quimby Competition for Young Organists, and being one of only five undergraduate organ majors from the US to be selected for the final round of the 2015 Taylor Organ Competition. In addition to competitions, Mitchell is a frequent participant in master classes, having participated in classes with such esteemed teachers as Olivier Latry, John Grew, Harald Vogel, and Nathan Laube, among others. An active recitalist in Europe and the United States, Mitchell has performed at notable venues including the Kallion kirkko (Helsinki, Finland), Tyska Kyrkan (Stockholm, Sweden), L’eglise Saint-Vaast (Béthune, France), Die Stiftskirche (Stuttgart, Germany), National City Christian Church (Washington, DC), Church of the Covenant (Cleveland, OH), Church of the Advent (Boston, MA), The Brick Church (New York City, NY), and Musée des Augustins (Toulouse, France). In addition to repertoire, Mitchell enjoys liturgical music and playing continuo. He was the Oberlin Sacred Music Intern at the Brick Church in New York City in 2016, participated in the 2015 Bach Aria Project in Boston, MA, as a continuo player, and was a student intern at the Church of the Covenant, Cleveland, OH, in 2013, where he worked with Jonathan Moyer.
David Kazimir Curator of Organs, has performed in major churches and cathedrals in Boston, Cleveland, New York, and Washington, D.C., and overseas in Cambridge, England; Rhonda, Wales; Lausanne, Switzerland; and at St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. A member of the staff of the C.B. Fisk organ-building firm from 2001 to 2010, Kazimir was involved in the construction of more than 20 instruments, including Fisk’s magnum opus at the Cathedral in Lausanne, Switzerland—the first American organ in a European cathedral. From 2010 to 2015, he served as curator of organs and carillons and lecturer in music at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. He currently serves as curator of organs at Oberlin Conservatory.