Pasadena Presbyterian Church Friends of Music Program

Saturday, December 8, 2007 – 7:00 p.m.

CANDLELIGHT & CAROLS

A Pasadena tradition for over six decades, this annual event features all the PPC choirs and string orchestra as we look back in celebration – and forward to claim the new birth of the Christmas season! The program will also include congregational carol singing.

We welcome old friends and newcomers alike to enjoy the
joyful Christmas music and join in the singing as we welcome the holiday season.

(Childcare provided for infants and children to age 4 in the nursery)

Admission is Free.
Bring your family and friends!

Save room for the wassail and dessert
reception that follows!

SERVICE OF
LESSONS & CAROLS

Sunday, December 23 at 10 a.m.

The church’s choirs present a joyous service of scripture and music of the season.

CHRISTMAS WORSHIP
Monday, December 24, Christmas Eve

PPC invites you to celebrate with us in special worship services--
4:00 p.m. Family Service (child friendly!)
9:00 p.m. Candlelight Communion Service
with Music by Kirk Choir, Handbells and Organ

Click here for more information about PPC's Aeolian-Skinner organ

Saturday, February 9, 2008 – 7:30 p.m.

Scott Montgomery, organist

Scott is the winner of the American Guild of Organists’ 2006 National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance, and part of the competition prize is two years of concert touring. Don’t miss this exciting young artist’s only Los Angeles-area appearance!

PROGRAM:
Fanfare –John Cook
Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 547 –J.S. Bach
Allegretto from Sonata in E-flat minor, Op. 65 –Horatio Parker
Choral No. 1 in E Major –Cesar Franck
Naiades & Claire de lune from Pièces de Fantaisie, Op. 55 –Louis Vierne
Theme à Variations from Hommage à Frescobaldi –Jean Langlais
Choral Fantasy on “Wie schön leucht’ uns der Morgenstern” –Max Reger

A native of Illinois, Scott Montgomery began piano lessons at the age of eight and was immediately fascinated by both church and theater organs. By age ten, he was playing the organ in various churches, and at the age of 15 he began to enter competitions. In July 2006 at the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Chicago, he was the first-prize winner of the National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance, a prize which includes two years of concert touring under professional management. He has won a number of other competitions and his performances have also been broadcast on American Public Media’s Pipedreams.

Good Friday, March 21, 2008 – 7:30 p.m.
Devotional Concert

Joseph Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross

The Kirk Choir, guest singers, soloists and the Friends of Music Orchestra present this annual concert on the most solemn day of the Christian calendar. This year’s program features Haydn’s emotionally expressive but least-performed oratorio, written in 1785 for a Good Friday observance in Spain.

Saturday, April 26, 2008 – 7:30 p.m.

Missa Gaia: An Earth Day celebration

The Pasadena Singers and organist Tim Howard will be joined by guest vocal soloists and a phenomenal professional band of jazz musicians including PPC’s own Brandon Bernstein.

Integrating world music, jazz and Gospel idioms with songs from the wild, MISSA GAIA celebrates the whole earth as a sacred space. ‘Gaia’ is the name that ancient Greeks gave to their home, the planet. The MISSA GAIA (EARTH MASS) was first conceived by Paul Winter in 1980 and has since been performed annually at New York’s Cathedral of St John the Divine.

“…A distinguished triumph in combining divergent music styles and imaginatively wedding voices, instrumentation and recorded sounds of a tundra wolf, canyon and musical wrens, harp seals, a flight of loons and singing humpback whales” —The Boston Globe

Saturday, June 7, 2008 – 7:30 p.m.

David Hurd, organist

“He shapes music with the structural insight of a composer and executes it with the boldness of an improviser....Hurd played with incisive rhythmic drive and imagination."
The Boston Globe

The only time the International Congress of Organists was held in the United States (Philadelphia 1977), a young organist from New York City was awarded the First Prize in Organ Performance by a panel of distinguished international judges. The next day, another panel of distinguished judges from around the world, again operating in the blind, awarded the First Prize in Organ Improvisation—and the winner was the same young American organist. David Hurd, then Music Director at the Church of the Intercession (Episcopal) in Harlem, within the space of a couple of days, had walked away with the two most prestigious organ prizes in the world at the time.

Two decades later David Hurd is widely recognized as one of the foremost church musicians and concert organists in the country, with a long list of awards, prizes, honors and achievements to his credit. He studied at the Juilliard School and at Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art. Later he attended Oberlin College in Ohio, and went on for further study at the University of North Carolina and at the Manhattan School of Music. Since 1976, David Hurd has worked at The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City, first as Director of Chapel Music and later also as Professor of Church Music and Organist. In the late eighties, three other seminaries awarded him honorary doctorates for his contributions to church music.

David Hurd is the composer of dozens of published choral and organ works. As a concert organist, David Hurd has performed throughout North America, and in 1981 he was invited to perform at the Internationaal Orgelfestival Haarlem, which meets in Gouda, the Netherlands, during which he received the diploma for improvisation at the Stitchting Internationaal Orgelconcours.

Be sure to be present for this rare opportunity to hear David Hurd perform on the west coast!

All Friends of Music concerts are free. Bring a friend!