AGO Sunday and Introduction

Wow, my first national AGO (American Guild of Organists) biennial convention! The convention is 5 days packed with organ concerts and education. The site for this year's convention was Minneapolis, Minnesota. When I registered for the convention a couple of months ago, I had to make selections for concerts and workshops. There was a huge amount of events to choose from and there was no way to see and hear everything. So I did the best I could. Following is a list of some of the events I attended and some photos that I took. I hope you enjoy reading about the convention.

Sunday afternoon was spent at St. Paul's Lake of the Isles Episcopal Church in Minneapolis listening to the Rising Star Recitals. These performers are all 22-32 years of age and we heard a total of seven concerts. That may sound like a lot, but each program was about 20 minutes long and we had 5 - 10 minutes between each program to stand and stretch. These young organists were all amazing and have bright futures as concert artists if that's what they want to do! Several of them played pieces I had never heard before including Anton Heiler's Tanz Tocatta played by Keenan Boswell. (I don't remember it now, but in my program I wrote "perhaps the coolest piece of organ music ever!) Marshall Cuffe played Emma Lou Diemmer's I Danced in the Morning and Brent J. Stamey played Petr Eben's Hommage a Buxtehude. The other artists were Jonathan Hehn, Raymond Nagem, Adam Piethmann, and Kirk Rich.

The evening event was our opening worship service at Central Lutheran Church just a short walk from the hotel. Before worship, we heard a carillon concert by David Johnson. The service included the premiere of Steven Stucky's The Kingdom of God (In no strange land) for organ and choir. The choir was made up of several Twin-Cities local choirs. There were more than 1,800 church musicians in attendance, so you can imagine what the singing was like! What a way to start a convention!!
Photo: St. Paul's Lake of the Isles Episcopal Church