NSAGO Young Artist Recital – Glenview Community Church – Sunday, April 28, 2019
Young Artist Recital encourages, dazzles, and charms!
Last year, 2017-2018, the North Shore Chapter focused on celebrating its 60th birthday, culminating in a special banquet and program that looked back at our Chapter’s many accomplishments. In 2018-2019, Sub-Dean Richard Clemmitt spearheaded an effort to end the year with a program looking to the future, a Young Artist Recital, featuring three organists from the Chicago area.
The three young artists, Adam Gruber, Madeleine Woodworth, and Jonathan Rudy, all took their first organ lessons with Chicago-area teachers, Adam and Madeleine with long-time Chicago-area AGO member Dennis Northway, and Jonathan with his mother and with Karl Bruhn, current Regional Councillor for the AGO’s Great Lakes Region. I had the privilege of teaching Madeleine at her first POE (Pipe Organ Encounter) sponsored by the Chicago area’s Fox Valley Chapter in 2009. Though she had just begun studying organ a few weeks earlier, she was already playing (very well!) Alain’s Litanies.
It was very encouraging to read the bios of these young artists. All have earned or are working on advanced degrees in organ and related fields, all hold music leadership positions in churches, and all have performed in numerous venues in the U.S. and even abroad. Jonathan and Madeleine both performed at the 2016 AGO National Convention in Houston, Jonathan as the winner of the National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance at the 2014 National Convention, and Madeleine as the winner of the 2015 Great Lakes AGO Regional Competition for Young Organists. Adam has not only performed in Scotland and England, but also on Chicago’s classical music radio station WFMT.
Adam, Madeleine, and Jonathan each performed substantial organ literature (i.e. they played a lot of notes with both hands and feet!), ranging from old masters like Buxtehude, Mozart, and Mendelssohn to recent works by Pamela Decker and Wilhelmina Esary, one of Madeleine’s classmates at Eastman. All three organists displayed dazzling technical facility and handling of the 1999 Buzard pipe organ’s resources!
The enthusiastic audience especially appreciated the charming and entertaining variety of styles and sounds presented at this recital. (I suspect most of the audience, like me, had skipped their Sunday afternoon nap, but none of us fell asleep!) Adam finished his portion of the program with an excerpt from Petr Eben’s Faust for Organ (#5 Studentenlieder), which has a rock solid rollicking beat and ends with an abrupt glissando – Adam’s flair with the glissando made us laugh out loud and applaud vigorously! Madeleine’s opening work was her classmate’s composition On Track, which – as Madeleine explained – was a clever play on the word “track,” using not only references to train whistles but also to tracker organs. Madeleine also made us laugh out loud with Calvin Hampton’s surprise ending to Those Americans (from his Five Dances for Organ). Jonathan’s gracious and informative remarks waxed sentimental when he dedicated his final patriotic music (Liberty and Union, Now and Forever from Pamela Decker’s Faneuil Hall) to his brother Benjamin Rudy, who is currently serving with U.S. armed forces.
It was incredibly encouraging to be dazzled and charmed by these three young artists. The future of organ performance is in great hands (and feet)! My only complaint? I wish there had been more people in the audience who were the same age as the performers.
—Dr. Elizabeth Naegele, AAGO