North Shore Chapter of the American Guild of Organists
Members Recital: Lenten Favorites
A Review by Derek Nickels
The cold and gloomy weather on Sunday, March 26, 2023 didn’t detract an appreciative audience from enjoying a Members Recital of Lenten Favorites at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Glenview. North Shore AGO members Jill Hunt, Christine Kraemer, and Richard Spantikow offered a diverse array of reflective and meditative pieces appropriate for the season of Lent. The 30-rank Buzard organ from 2002 offered the perfect palette for such colorful pieces.
Jill Hunt began the afternoon with the Prologue, Variations and Epilogue on “Wondrous Love” by the American organist and composer of many fine pieces of church music, Gerald Near (b. 1942).
Christine Kraemer offered three works by women composers beginning with Variations on “Erhalt Uns Herr” by North Shore AGO charter member Adrienne Tindall (b. 1935). The contrasting five variations were followed by a beautiful Meditation on “Were You There” by Washington, DC based and leading African-American composer Evelyn Simpson-Curenton (b. 1953). Dr. Kraemer concluded her portion of the afternoon’s program with Variations on “Nettleton” by Undine Eliza Anna Smith Moore (1904-1989), the “Dean of Black Women Composers.”
Host organist, Richard Spantikow concluded the afternoon with Contemplations (Four Expressive Pieces after a poem by William Blake by the prolific American composer and former Professor of Music at University of Washington, George Frederick McKay (1899-1970). The 1962 work quotes William Billings hymn-tune “When Jesus Wept” in the first movement. Since most of us heard the gospel reading of Lazarus being raised from the dead earlier in the morning, this was an appropriate conclusion to the day.
