We are very pleased to have Dr. Ann Labounsky on the faculty of CMAA’s Colloquium XXIV. As professor of music and chairman of the Organ and Sacred Music degree programs at Duquesne University, she oversees undergraduate and graduate programs in sacred music.

This year, Ann will be offering two breakout sessions on current-day Solesmes. She will also be the organist for the Colloquium Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at 5:00 p.m. on July 4, 2014 at St. John the Evangelist Church.

Dr. Labounsky is widely known, both in the United States and in Europe, as a virtuoso performer and improviser at the organ and particularly as a leading American disciple of Jean Langlais. From 1962 to 1964 she lived and studied in Paris as a Fulbright scholar. There, as an organ student of André Marchal and Jean Langlais, she immersed herself in the French organ tradition, studying many of Langlais’s organ compositions with the composer, and playing them for him on the organ at Sainte-Clotilde. In 1964, as Langlais’s student at the Schola Cantorum, she was awarded Diplôme de Virtuosité with Mention Maximum in both performance and improvisation, the first American organist to be so honored.

Labounsky has been a frequent concert performer on two continents, including a number of recitals on the organ at Sainte-Clotilde. Her performances have been broadcast over the French National Radio, as well as public radio stations in the United States. Her undergraduate and graduate degrees in organ were earned at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan. She also holds the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology from the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of a biography of Langlais, Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music, (Amadeus Press, 2000). In celebration of the centennial of Jean Langlais in 2007, the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Guild of Organists produced a DVD entitled Life and Music of Jean Langlais for which she was the narrator and performer at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, California.

Labounsky holds the position of Organ Artist in Residence at First Lutheran Church in Pittsburgh. For more information about Dr. Labounsky, visit her website.

Graduate and undergraduate music students may receive credit for their attendance at CMAA Colloquia and Chant Intensive courses.

For more information about registering for the Colloquium, please visit our page here. If you have questions, contact us.