Elizabeth Brown studied organ with David Thorburn at North Park College, where she graduated in 1972 with a degree in Math, and went on to a career as a CPA and attorney. For most of her career, she served as Assistant General Counsel and then General Counsel for The...
Dr. J. Paul Cochran is organist at St. John United Church of Christ. He received piano and organ training from Jack Ruhl in Ft. Wayne, Indiana and holds a Master’s degree in Piano from the University of Redlands and a Doctor of Music in composition from Northwestern...
Like many members of A.G.O., music is an avocation for me. I became interested in church music while stationed on the east coast during the Viet Nam conflict, and was able to attend a number of services at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. After my...
But I was there!!! I mean I was really, REALLY there when that Skinner was installed!. I was an eighteen year old kid (it’s ok if you do the numbers; I’m too old to care) from the neighborhoods of Chicago with nothing special but a love of playing the...
I got my start playing the organ when I was in 7th grade in Powhattan, Kansas, and was a member of Zion Lutheran Church. The elders decided that they needed some new blood at the organ bench and asked my friend and me if we would take organ lessons and be willing to...
It seems a lifetime ago that I was a grade school kid at St. Francis Xavier in Wilmette. At that time, the school offered free music lessons…students would leave class and walk across the parking lot to the convent. My piano teacher, Sister Marian Celeste, looked at...
As a 9-year-old choirboy, my curiosity was piqued by the movement of the Swell shutters behind the façade pipes of the 1925 Austin organ in the loft at St. Peter Catholic Church in Steubenville, Ohio. How was Mrs. Gilligan controlling that from the console, which...
I grew up in Aurora. My dad sang in the choir at our church, Fourth Street Methodist, where his dad had been the minister from 1919 to 1926. As a little child I would always end up near the organ console after church. It was an eight-rank tubular-pneumatic Hinners...
Lowell Johnson My husband, Lowell, began his life-long love of the pipe organ, and the music it could produce, at the Dutch Reformed Church in Roseland where his aunt was organist. We shared a piano background but once we’d settled in Deerfield, he began organ lessons...
It seems a lifetime ago that I was just a grade school kid at St. Francis Xavier School in Wilmette. At that time, the school offered free music lessons…students would leave class and walk across the parking lot to the convent. My piano teacher, Sister Marian Celeste,...
After 12 years of piano study, it was my senior year in high school when I began studying the organ at the urging of my mother. I decided to major in organ at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN. After 2 years of study I was not accomplishing much, and...
“There is no sound more beautiful than people singing God’s praise.” These words, instilled in me by my first organ teacher and choir director, Ann Celeen Dohms, have become a life-long mantra. Before I sang in her boys’ choir or was her organ student, I was...
My first experience hearing a pipe organ live happened when I attended the graduation of the Medical School at the University of Michigan as a child. We were in Hill Auditorium when all the newly minted medical doctors, including a family friend, stood up for the...
As with so many others, my obsession with the pipe organ began when I was a child. When I was eight, the families of the adult choir were enlisted to relocate organ pipes and parts from the sanctuary to the parlor while the church chancel was being rebuilt. I was...
As with all of us, the path to where we end up is often winding with many detours along the way. It does make life interesting! Growing up in rural Minnesota, I was blessed to have been taught for 10 years by my dear piano teacher, Sister Eugenia. In 6th grade, she...
I believe that it is through us and our music that God speaks to people every bit as much as through the spoken word. As a musician in church and in the synagogue, I am always reminded of how my playing touches the lives of the parishioners. Currently, I am the...
William A. Crowle – 9/25/56-3/16/19 Long-time member, William A. Crowle, (Bill), 62, died peacefully in his home in Vernon Hills, IL of cancer on March 16, 2019. Bill began piano study at the age of four, and violin at 6. He attended the Eastman School of Music,...
Kirsten Santos Rutschman As the energy of fall swirls around and students return to school, I am drawn back to the whirlwind first days of my freshman year at Stanford University, where I promptly failed to make the cut for private piano study. Not to be deterred for...
I'll let you in on a little secret: my greatest joy as an organist is playing hymns. To be sure, I enjoy the repertoire of our instrument, but I also find the experience of leading a choir and congregation in the great hymns of the church to...
My life as a musician, organist, conductor, and harpsichordist has been much more enjoyable and rich than I could have ever imagined when I set my sights on this path in earnest, some thirty years ago. Above all else, I value the opportunity to immerse myself in...
I recently celebrated a birthday - not one of those that slips by and you hope no one notices. With this one, I am standing on the cusp of a new decade and for some reason, those decade birthdays have been very significant in my life. I've thought back to how my life...
I have a wonderful family, which has filled my life with much joy: husband Jack, daughters Jackie, Jenny, Julie, Jill, ten grandchildren, and now four great grandsons. Music has been a wonderful added enrichment, and as I write this I am realizing how significant a...
My wife, Elizabeth, and I moved to the North Shore in 1992. Although we came here primarily for my job as Organist and Choirmaster of Christ Church, Winnetka, we also were drawn by the thriving arts community and great schools. Elizabeth has worked for many years...
I joined the North Shore AGO chapter a year or so ago, when I began serving as organist at Kenilworth Union Church. Unfortunately, my work in Bloomington has prevented me from attending AGO events in Chicago. But, it is almost January, and that means it is time for...