Currently the organ scholar at Trinity Church, Alex Leonardi is a master’s student at The Juilliard School. They received a bachelor’s degree in organ performance from the Curtis Institute of Music, where they held the Dr. Mi-Wha Lee Fellowship. As a young musician, they studied under Dr. Matthew Lewis in the pre-college division of Juilliard. A semifinalist in the American Guild of Organists National Improvisation Competition, Leonardi is an avid improviser, which they will demonstrate in today’s program.
Hear the talents of Sarah Simko, associate organist at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit and winner of first prize in the Schoenstein Competition in the Art of Organ Accompaniment. She received a Graduate Award from the Presser Foundation to create a comprehensive set of recordings of organ music by living American female composers. During her time as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, Simko worked with the Department of Mathematics to explore how the brain processes music, through detailed study of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Six Sonatas.
Today’s midday concert features a musician of remarkable technique and sensitivity. Organist Mina Marie Jelinek has worked at such high-profile venues as the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, and studied with teachers from the acclaimed Eastman School of Music, The Juilliard School, and the National Conservatory of Paris. Her program consists of virtuosic French works and pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Angela Kraft Cross is an internationally respected virtuoso organist, pianist, and composer — and also an eye surgeon, with dual degrees in physics and organ performance from Oberlin College. Her passion for sharing the joys of her instrument keeps her performing for a wide-ranging audience. Today’s program includes both her original pieces and those of other composers.
Young virtuoso Clara Gerdes Bartz grew up in North Carolina and recently graduated from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, where she studied with renowned professor Martin Jean. The organist has already established herself as a performer of prodigious technique and control. She received the Baker Prize in Organ Performance (2020) and the Julia Sherman Award for Excellence in Organ Playing (2021) and is an adjunct instructor of organ at Rider University’s Westminster Choir College.
Organist Nicole Keller has performed in venues around the globe, including St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Cathédrale Notre-Dame, and The Kazakh National University for the Arts. The assistant professor of music at the University of Michigan is also in demand as an instructor and guest lecturer, most recently at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and Yale University. She is known for bringing a freshness to pieces old and new, especially Bach and such 20th-century American composers as Florence Price and Calvin Hampton.
Gail Archer is a professor at Barnard College and Columbia University and founder of Musforum, an international network for women organists. Her repertoire spans the 16th to 20th centuries, and she is one of the first American women to play Olivier Messiaen’s complete works, earning praise from The New York Times for mixing a “compelling authority” and “bracing physicality” with “a sense of vulnerability and awe.”
Organist Jennifer McPherson Mulhern has earned acclaim for her interpretations of early music, including as a prize winner in the Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck Organ Competition held in Amsterdam. The music director at Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, she holds degrees from the College of the Holy Cross and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Dr. Kristina Ziema Rizzotto is a sought-after organist, composer, and pianist who has performed her original sacred and secular works around the globe. She is the director of music at Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church in Minneapolis and was previously the organist at the Benedictine Abbey of Rio de Janeiro, built in 1590 and home to one of the oldest organs in South America. Her popular YouTube channel features more than 350+ organ, piano, and choral recordings.
