This recital will be followed by a special fund-raising NewOrleans style dinner featuring the Joe Cushenberry Trio to benefit the concert series.
Tickets for the fund raiser will be on sale beginning October 15 and will be available for $25 from the church office and members of the Fine Arts Committee.

                                        Sunday, January 25, 2009   4:00 p.m.
                                        THREE YOUNG ORGANISTS
                David Harrison Nathan Jones Christopher Ray, Organists

This concert,co-sponsored by William Carey University, presents two winners of Carey's 2008 prestigious Clarence Dickinson Organ Playing Competition, David Harrison (high school division) and Christopher Ray (college division), together with a third organist, Nathan Jones. David Harrison began piano at age six. In the first months following the loss of his family's piano to Hurricane Katrina, he found an interest in organ while experimenting with the pipe organ at his church. Since then he has studied organ under the direction of his mother. He currently serves as organist at Calvary Baptist Church in Pascagoula, Mississippi and is a senior at Ocean Springs High School. Nathan Jones is the son of Ken and Jerri Jones of Ellisville. He is currently an organ student of Lorenz Maycher. He graduated from  Jones County Junior College last May, and is now a junior piano performance major at USM where he studies with Dr.Elizabeth Moak. Nathan serves as organist at Magnolia Baptist Church in Hattiesburg. Christopher Ray is a sophomore at Mississippi College. He is from Sumrall, Mississippi, and began studying organ with Kathy Vail when he was 15. He is now a piano and organ major studying with Dr. Angela Willoughby and Dr. Robert Knupp.

A festival concert of two land mark choral works by the French composers Maurice Duruflé and Francis Poulenc, this concert features the choir of First-Trinity Presbyterian Church under the direction of Matthew Lewis, with guest soprano soloist, Maryann Kyle. Maryann Kyle is associate professor of voice at The University of Southern Mississippi and is Director of Southern Opera and Music Theatre Company's Outreach and Workshop program. She has sung leading roles with the Mississippi Opera, Chattanooga Opera, DesMoines MetroOpera, the Southern Arts Festival Opera, the University of Illinois, East Tennessee Opera, LSU Opera, Gulf Coast Opera, and The Opera at USM. In addition, she is the director of the apprentice artist program with Mississippi Opera and is artist/teacher in residence with the Opera festival di Roma. Matthew Lewis is Organist-choirmaster at Church of the Incarnation in New York City, Organist-choirmaster at Temple Israel in Lawrence, NY, and is Artistic Director and Conductor of St.George's Choral Society. He is on the organ faculty of the Juilliard School Pre-College division, and is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Organ at Westminster Choir College. His teachers include Robert Page, Jon Gillock, and the legendary organ virtuoso - Marie-Madeleine Duruflé.

Palm Sunday, April 5, 2009   4:00 p.m.
MARCEL DUPRÉ - THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS
KEN COWAN, ORGANIST

Marcel Dupré's vast tone poem "The Stations of the Cross" originally began its life in a 1931 concert at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels in which the great organist, Dupré, improvised fourteen separate movements based upon poetry by Paul Claudel. The performance was so well received that the composer later wrote down the entire work from memory, and it has gained a place among the standard works of organ literature. Ken Cowan is one of the most sought  after organists in North America. He has performed solo recitals across the United States and Canada, and has won numerous awards, including first prizes at the Royal Canadian College of Organists National Competition and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music National Competition. Currently Mr. Cowan serves as Assistant Professor of Organ at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ. A native of Thorold, Ontario, Canada, he received the Master's degree and Artist Diploma from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and is also a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music.

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