Dom Benedict Maria Andersen, OSB
Dom Benedict Maria Andersen is co-founder and sub-prior of Silverstream Priory, a Benedictine community in the Diocese of Meath in Ireland. The monks of Silverstream devote themselves to the worthy performance of the Sacred Liturgy (according to the pre-conciliar books) and to perpetual adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar in a spirit of reparation and intercession for the sanctification of priests.
A native of Denver, Colorado, Dom Benedict holds degrees in philosophy (B.Phil. Pontifical Lateran University, Rome) and Eastern Orthodox theology (M.Div. St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, NY). He wrote his master’s thesis on the topic of a little known adaptation of the Anglican Eucharistic Liturgy for use by Anglican groups joining the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch.
Dom Benedict’s solemn monastic profession was the first such event in the Diocese of Meath since the dissolution of the Abbey of Fore by Henry VIII in 1539. In another significant milestone, his priestly ordination by Michael Smith, Bishop of Meath (All Saints’ Day, 2015) was the first ordination in the Latin language in the Irish Church since the 1970’s.
Dom Benedict’s passion is liturgical book design, which is his primary monastic work. On top of several internal projects for the monastery, he is currently working on an English translation of the Psalter according to the traditions of the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and the “Old Italic” version, as well as a daily patristic lectionary for use in the monastic Office of Mattins.
Dom Andersen will present a plenary talk on Tuesday, June 20th during the Colloquium entitled: “Fulfilled is all that David told”: Recovering the Christian Psalter.
Samuel Backman
We are delighted to welcome Sam Backman as our organ recitalist for the 2017 Colloquium. His recital will be played on Wednesday, June 21 at 7:30 pm at the Cathedral of St. Paul in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota.
Samuel Backman is a native of Duluth, MN who was raised in Independence, WI. He holds a holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Saint Olaf College, a Master of Music degree from Yale University. Samuel is currently a doctoral candidate at the American Organ Institute, located at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, where he studies organ with John Schwandt and teaches freshman-level theory and aural skills.
Awards include election to the national honorary music society Pi Kappa Lambda while at Saint Olaf College, as well as the G. Winston Cassler Scholarship. At Yale Universty, Samuel was awarded a full tuition scholarship and was winner of the Mary Baker Award for excellence in organ accompaniment. In 2010, he won first prize in the Paul and Ruth Manz Scholarship competition established at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.
Samuel has been a church musician since the age of 12. He has held positions at the University Church at Yale, Saint Paul’s on the Green Episcopal Church in Norwalk, Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Golden Valley, and the Cathedral of Saint Paul. He is currently the organist and director of music at Assumption Catholic Church in Duncan. In addition to his work as an organist, teacher, and conductor, Samuel enjoys composing, editing and arranging.
Wilko Brouwers
Wilko Brouwers of the Netherlands will conduct the Clemens non Papa Polyphony Choir at XXVII CMAA Summer Colloquium in St. Paul, and the Refresher chant choir. He has taught both chant and polyphony at the CMAA Colloquia since 2004. He has also taught courses at other CMAA events, including Summer Chant Intensive 2015 and was one of the directors for the CMAA’s Winter Sacred Music event in January 2016. He will be teaching the Ward Advanced Course this summer June 26-30, 2017 at Duquesne University.
This year the central work of his choir will be the Requiem Mass by Clemens non papa on Thursday, June 22nd. Brouwers’ polyphonic choir will also sing the Howells polyphonic Credo on Saturday, June 24th.
Wilko Brouwers has conducted the Monteverdi Kamerkoor Utrecht from 1989 until 2016 and the Strijps Kamerkoor Eindhoven since 2004. He was also the director of the Gregorian Schola of St. Benedictus Abbey in Achel, Belgium, a post he held for the last eight years until its closing in 2013. In 2016 he founded “The Gregorian Circle”, a group of 25 singers who join in one of Utrecht’s medieval churches to study and sing chant.
Original compositions by Wilko Brouwers have been published and recorded.
As a music educator, Wilko Brouwers teaches choral conducting at the Utrecht Art Center in the Netherlands. Internationally, he has taught workshops on Gregorian chant in Auburn, Alabama, Still River, Massachusetts, and Pamplona, Spain. Brouwers is the author of Stepping Tones, a method of sight reading for elementary schools and children’s choirs based on the Ward Method. His Words with Wings: Gregorian Chant for Children in Twenty Lessons has been published by the Church Music Association of America, with both student and teacher’s workbooks and demonstration CDs.
Mary Ann Carr Wilson
Mary Ann Carr Wilson will be directing the Fundamentals chant choir for men and women at Colloquium XXVII, as well as participating in a panel discussion on children’s voices. She will also lead a discussion on resources for children.
Soprano Mary Ann Carr Wilson holds a B.M. and an M.M. in Vocal Performance from San Diego State University. She enjoys a regional career and has appeared as soloist with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony, and the San Diego Master Chorale. Mary Ann also performs a wide variety of chamber music, including Irish traditional music.
Having trained under experts in Gregorian chant and Renaissance music as well as performed in several early music ensembles, Mary Ann now directs youth and adult choirs at St. Anne Catholic Church in San Diego. The three choirs sing Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony at weekly Sung and Solemn Masses in the Extraordinary Form (Traditional Latin form of the Mass), and by special engagement. Carr Wilson has been teaching children to sing Gregorian Chant for several years in a summer program called “Chant Camp”.
In addition, she will offer private vocal coaching sessions during the week.
On a first-come, first-served basis, individuals may schedule one-on-one vocal lessons with Carr Wilson during registration for the special Colloquium rate of only $30/session. The thirty-minute sessions are limited, so you can pre-register and pay for a session (the session day and time will be assigned to you) or you can register and pay for a session at registration on June 19th. Prepayment is required for vocal sessions, which can be made during conference registration. Our Administrative assistant will manage her teaching schedule and accept payments. To pre-register for a vocal coaching session, please contact us at programs@musicasacra.com.
Charles Cole
Charles Cole will direct the Men’s Schola Chant Choir, as well as the Howells Polyphony Choir at the XXVII Colloquium in St. Paul. An accomplished organist and choral director, he comes to us from the London Oratory (often referred to as “the Brompton Oratory” because of its location in London).
Charles Cole began his musical training as a chorister at Westminster Cathedral. He went on to win a major music scholarship to Ampleforth and organ scholarships at Exeter College, Oxford and Westminster Cathedral. He is Assistant Director of Music at the London Oratory where he directs the London Oratory Junior Choir which, in addition to its liturgical duties, provides the Children’s Chorus for the Royal Ballet’s productions at Covent Garden.
He was appointed Director of the Schola Cantorum at the London Oratory School in 2012. The Schola, for boys aged 8-18, sings polyphony and plainchant at Mass every Saturday at the London Oratory Church. The choir also sings concerts and tours abroad, and is well known for the soundtracks to the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films. The boys were recently invited to sing with the Choristers of Westminster Cathedral in a joint performance of the B minor Mass.
He directed the children’s chorus in a 400th anniversary performance of the Monteverdi Vespers with the Monteverdi Choir conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. He was involved in two of the Papal Liturgies on the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to London, conducting London Brass in James MacMillan’s Tu es Petrus, commissioned for the Mass at Westminster Cathedral, and playing the organ for the Prayer Vigil at Hyde Park for a congregation of 80,000. Recently he has given organ recitals in St Petersburg (2012), Notre Dame, Paris (2013—the 850th anniversary year of the cathedral’s foundation), the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City (2013) and Jerusalem (2013).
Since 2011 he has been a Gregorian Chant Director for the Church Music Association of America’s annual Colloquia. He was recently invited by James MacMillan to speak about Gregorian Chant at Musica Sacra Scotland’s inaugural conference. In August of 2014, as part of the Palestine Choral Festival, he led a number of choral workshops for children’s and adult choirs in Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem.
Dr. Jennifer Donelson
Jennifer Donelson joins the 2017 faculty again to teach two breakout sessions: “Spiritual formation and vocal pedagogy for priests and seminarians” and “Sacred Music and Evangelization”.
Donelson is an associate professor and the director of sacred music at St. Joseph’s Seminary (Dunwoodie) in New York, where she also teaches sacred music courses in the St. Cecilia Academy for Pastoral Musicians. Donelson has previously served as an Associate Professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. Having studied Gregorian chant at the Catholic University of America and Abbey of St. Peter in Solesmes, France, Dr. Donelson has served as the director of music at St. Gregory the Great Seminary (Diocese of Lincoln, NE) and St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center (UNL). She currently directs the Schola Cantorum of St. Joseph’s Seminary, the Metropolitan Catholic Chorale, and teaches Gregorian chant to children using the Ward Method at Neumann Classical School (Tuckahoe, NY) and Colm Cille Club (Pelham, NY).
She has given diocesan workshops in Gregorian chant across the U.S., is a co-founder of the annual Musica Sacra Florida Gregorian chant conference, and has served on the faculty of the annual colloquium of the Church Music Association of America. While in south Florida, Donelson directed the scholae cantorum at St. Michael the Archangel and Sts. Francis and Claire parishes in Miami, and taught according to the Ward method in the children’s choirs at the Oratory of Ave Maria, FL.
She has co-edited Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought, and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, recently published by the Church Music Association of America (CMAA). Her publications also include articles in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Sacred Music, Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal, the proceedings of the Gregorian Institute of Canada, and Liturgy in the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark). She serves on the board of the Society for Catholic Liturgy as well as the CMAA, is the managing editor of the CMAA’s journal Sacred Music, was a co-organizer of the Sacra Liturgia USA 2015 conference in New York, and a speaker at Sacra Liturgia UK and Sacra Liturgia Milano.
David Hughes
David J. Hughes returns to the Colloquium faculty this year as director of the Women’s Chant Schola. David will also lead the new music seminar again this year. The new music seminar offers composers the opportunity to hone their craft with colleagues in three breakouts during the week. There will also be a New Music Reading Session open to all participants, where the best compositions from the new music seminar will be sung by conference participants. David will also serve as organist for one of the liturgies during the week. In addition to these duties, David will also participate in a panel discussion on Children’s Voices.
David is Organist & Choirmaster at St. Mary Church in Norwalk, Connecticut, where he oversees a program of seven choirs, including the professional St. Mary’s Schola Cantorum, which specializes in late medieval and early Renaissance polyphony in the context of a weekly Solemn Mass in the traditional rite, and the volunteer St. Mary’s Choir, whose core repertoire is English music of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is founder and director of the St. Mary’s Student Schola, a comprehensive program of musical education for children. The Student Schola sings regularly for Masses and Vespers in Connecticut and elsewhere, including a foray to World Youth Day in Madrid to sing Gregorian propers and polyphonic motets at stadium Masses. He directs Viri Galilaei, an ensemble of men from the tristate New York area who gather weekly to sing Vespers, to explore the singing of medieval polyphony from original manuscripts, and to discuss matters of theology, philosophy, and politics.
In demand as an instructor of Gregorian chant, he frequently travels for workshops, clinics, and recitals. He has written several film scores and a number of Masses and motets. David’s composition teachers have included Ruth Schonthal and John Halle, and he has studied organ with Paul Jacobs and Daniel Sullivan. A native of Stamford, Connecticut, he is a graduate of Yale College.
Dr. Ann Labounsky
We are very pleased to have Dr. Ann Labounsky on the faculty of CMAA’s Colloquium XXVII. 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. Dr. Labounsky will offer two breakout sessions on organ technique.
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 Summer Chant courses through the Duquesne University Mary Pappert Department of Music.
Dr. William Mahrt
Photo courtesy of Rene Zajner
William Mahrt is Associate Professor and Director of Early Music Singers in the music department at Stanford University, President of the Church Music Association of America, and editor of Sacred Music, the oldest continuously published journal of music in North America.
Dr. Mahrt grew up in Washington state; after attending Gonzaga University and the University of Washington, he completed a doctorate at Stanford University in 1969. He taught at Case Western Reserve University and the Eastman School of Music, and then returned to Stanford in 1972, where he continues to teach early music. Since 1964 he has directed the choir of St. Ann Chapel in Palo Alto, which sings Mass and Vespers in Gregorian chant on all the Sundays of the year, with masses in the polyphonic music of Renaissance masters for the holy days.
His research interests include theory and performance of Medieval and Renaissance music, troubadours, Machaut, Dufay, Lasso, Dante, English Cathedrals, Gregorian chant, and Renaissance polyphony. He has published articles on the relation of music and liturgy, and music and poetry. He frequently leads workshops in the singing of Gregorian chant and the sacred music of the Renaissance.
At this year’s Colloquium, Dr. Mahrt will conduct a course of chant improvisation, focused primarily on study (this course will include singing two chant propers during the week), as well as delivering one of the plenary addresses entitled “Silence, Listening, and Singing”. He will also teach two breakout sessions on chant modes.
Melanie Malinka
We are so pleased to have Melanie Malinka on the faculty for Colloquium XXVII. She will direct one of our polyphony choirs, the Motet Choir. She will also offer two breakout sessions on musicianship. Based on her courses offered at the Cathedral of the Madeleine Choir School, these sessions will be especially useful for young singers. She will also participate in the panel discussion on children’s programs on Friday. In addition, she will offer private vocal coaching sessions during the week.
On a first-come, first-served basis, individuals may schedule one-on-one vocal lessons with Malinka during registration for the special Colloquium rate of only $30/session. The thirty-minute sessions are limited, so you can pre-register and pay for a session (the session day and time will be asssigned to you) or you can register and pay for a session at registration on June 19th. Prepayment is required for vocal sessions, which can be made during conference registration. Our Administrative assistant will manage her teaching schedule and accept payments. To pre-register for a vocal coaching session, please contact us at programs@musicasacra.com.
Melanie Malinka is a native of Stuttgart, Germany and has served as Director of Music at The Madeleine Choir School in Salt Lake City, UT since 2001. In this position she oversees the school’s rigorous choral program and leads preparations of the choristers for their extensive concert season, regular service commitments, international tours, and engagements with leading local arts organizations including Utah Symphony | Utah Opera and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
She regularly conducts the Cathedral Choir of the Cathedral of the Madeleine and has served as interim chorus master for several opera productions of the Utah Opera. She also regularly serves as guest conductor at youth choral festivals around the country, including Pueri Cantores festivals and the Notre Dame Children’s Choir Community Festival. In addition, she also maintains a private voice studio focusing on boy sopranos and young adolescent voices.
Melanie received a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey and a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from the University of Utah where she studied with Dr. Barlow Bradford.
Matthew J. Meloche
We are delighted to welcome Matthew J. Meloche back to the 2017 Colloquium faculty. Meloche, Director of Sacred Music, Cathedral of SS Simon and Jude, Phoenix, Arizona , will present two breakout sessions on the following topics: “Introducing Sacred Music to a Parish Community” and “Church Music as a Career”.
Canadian-born organist Matthew J. Meloche has been working for the restoration of sacred music in the Catholic Church since he was first hired as a Music Director of a large Windsor, Ontario parish at age 15. For the past 15 years he has worked at parishes from 700 to 4500 families, doing everything from the Extraordinary Form to bringing Gregorian chant to Life Teen Masses. Matthew has taught dozens of priests and deacons to sing their parts of the Mass over the years. He has led retreats and missions, delivered academic lectures and practical workshops, and performed organ concerts throughout the United States and Canada.
He studied philosophy at the University of Windsor until deciding to move to the United States to do church music as a full-time profession. While in Canada he served at many parishes, including Music Director and Principal Organist of the highly acclaimed music program at the Windsor Tridentine Mass Community (www.windsorlatinmass.org). After five years working at parishes in the Diocese of Columbus, Ohio he moved to Phoenix, AZ (to forever escape snow). Matthew worked as Director of Sacred Music at St. Clare of Assisi Parish in Surprise, Arizona until 2013 when he was promoted to Director of Sacred Music at the Cathedral of SS. Simon and Jude.
Jeffrey Morse
Jeffrey Morse will serve on the Colloquium XXVII faculty as the director of the beginning polyphony choir and will assist Jonathan Ryan in the direction of the Office Chant choir. He will also again lead participants in a morning solfege warmup each morning.
Morse is a conductor, singer, and teacher of Gregorian Chant. A student of Dr. Mary Berry (Cambridge, UK) in Gregorian Chant and Gregorian Semiology. He also attended Sonoma State University and the Université François Rabelais de Tours (France). He was a student of Dr. Alise Brown at the University of N. Colorado in Ward Method, a method of teaching music, both modern and Gregorian notation and theory to school children. A native of Northern California, he however spent much of his formative years in England where he was exposed to the English choral tradition and especially the tradition of child choristers.
In 2002, he established in a small parish in California a flourishing child chorister program under the pedagogical direction of the Royal School of Church Music, proving that even ordinary parishes can musically benefit from this most ancient of Church traditions-the child chorister. In this program, the children were not only trained in Chant but also in singing the treble parts of the polyphony with the choir every Sunday and major feast. The fruits of this were not only beneficial for the singing of services at the parish, adding to the beauty and solemnity of the liturgies, but promises future fruits as well as already some of the original child-choristers have gone on to undergraduate and graduate studies in sacred music.
Mr. Morse is widely looked upon as a leader in the teaching of Gregorian Chant in the U.S and has given many workshops for adults and children in this matchless music of the Church. He is a regular Chant conductor and teacher at the annual Colloquium of the Church Music Association of America. Enthusiastic and missionary about this music, he has been called “disciplined in his approach, but fun and amusing, displaying a complete knowledge and understanding of his subject and its practice and use in the Church of the 21st century”.
Dr. MeeAe Cecilia Nam
Dr. MeeAe Cecilia Nam will offer two breakout sessions on vocal pedagogy at the upcoming Colloquium for 2017. She will also participate in the panel discussion on children’s voices during the week. In addition, Private vocal coaching with Dr. Nam will again be made available at the CMAA Colloquium this year.
For several years, Dr. Nam has been on the faculty of the CMAA Colloquium, sharing her expertise in vocal pedagogy, vocal performance and directing techniques. She has also served as a plenary speaker and as a director of polyphonic choirs. Once again she will offer to assist participants on a personal basis with individual vocal coaching.
On a first-come, first-served basis, individuals may schedule one-on-one vocal lessons with Dr. Nam during registration for the special Colloquium rate of only $30/session. The thirty-minute sessions are limited, so you can pre-register and pay for a session (the session day and time will be asssigned to you) or you can register and pay for a session at registration on June 19th. Prepayment is required for vocal sessions, which can be made during conference registration. Our Administrative assistant will manage her teaching schedule and accept payments. To pre-register for a vocal coaching session, please contact us at programs@musicasacra.com.
Soprano MeeAe Cecilia Nam has extensive performance experience as soloist in recitals, oratorio, sacred music, chamber and orchestral concerts, and operas in the United States, Germany, Austria and South Korea. She has gained a fine reputation for her musical interpretations with her numerous concerts in recent years.
Dr. Nam gained a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Before joining the faculty of Music at Eastern Michigan University in 2009 she taught voice at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she served as chair of the vocal studies program for 5 years. She also founded and directed the annual “Vocal Arts Competition for Young Colorado Musicians.”
Since 2000 with her husband, Dr. Horst Buchholz, organist and conductor, she has given numerous recitals for organ and voice in Germany and Austria. She has collaborated with world-class musicians including Krista Bennion Feeney, Joseph Robinson, James Buswell and sung under the direction of Horst Buchholz, Joseph Dorfman, Adam Flatt, Michael Christie and Martin Isepp among others.
Her excellent understanding of works by Mozart has led her to perform many of his sacred works including Exsultate jubilate, Grand Mass in C minor, and the Requiem performed with the members of the Mozarteum Orchestra in the 250th anniversary year of Mozart’s birth in Salzburg, Austria. She has given many performances of works such as Bach’s Cantatas, Easter Oratorio, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Masses, Schubert’s Masses, Gounod’s St. Cecilia Mass, Mahler’s Gloria, R. V. Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem and Orff’s Carmina BuranaDue to her great interest in contemporary music she has premiered, in her region, many living composers’ works including Joseph Dorfman’s one act opera Shulamith for soprano and percussion, Voice of River Han by David Mullikin (won distinguished composer by MTNA), James Mobberly’s Words of Love, Georgy Kurtag’s Kafka Fragmente for soprano and violin, Tan Dun’s Silkroad for soprano and percussion.
Dr. Nam is a frequent guest recitalist and lecturer for the Music Teacher’s Association of America and recently gave presentations at the conferences of the College Music Society and the American Liszt Society. She served as a faculty member and performer at the Vianden International Summer Festival and school in Luxembourg in 2011.
As lecturer and vocal clinician Dr. Nam frequently travels throughout the United States, Europe and South Korea giving vocal workshops and master classes at Universities.
Her students have been and are active in national and international competitions and music festivals. Recently Dr. Nam appeared as advisor and guest artist clinician in the first annual “Seoul International Opera Festival,” where three of her students performed lead roles in Mozart’s “Magic Flute.”
She is currently undertaking a project of a CD publication of “Forgotten Songs of Thódore Gouvy”. She has been giving a lecture recital of Gouvy’s songs at various places including “Hans Eisler Musik Hochshule in Berlin, Germany, Eastern Michigan University, Kent State University and University of Tennessee, Knoxville and also during The American Liszt Society Conference in Portland, Oregon, in May 2012.
“Soprano Mee-Ae Nam has a voice of surprising power for so petite a frame, accurate in intonation, well-supported in delivery and with sly bits of interpretation thrown in.” Glenn Giffin, The Denver Post
“A clear, well-supported voice that moves easily in its registers. …..extra care in projecting words.” Glenn Giffin, The Denver Post
“…Leicht und makellos in den Höhen, dramatisch im Ausdruck füllte sie mühelos den akustisch eher schwierigen Kirchenraum. In der Mozartarie… ließ sie großartig perlende Koloraturen höhen..” Max Götz, Paasauer Neue Presse, Waldkirchen, Germany
Rev. Jude Orakwe
Rev. Fr. Jude Orakwe is a lecturer at the music department of Anambra State University (aka Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University). He is also the founder and director of Shanahan Institute of Music of Onitsha Archdiocese (for adults) as well as of George Handel Music Academy (for the children) of St. Joseph’s Parish Odoakpu Onitsha.
He directs the Archdiocesan choir and is also the music director of St. Joseph’s Parish Choir.
He had his doctorate in ethnomusicology from Indiana University, Bloomington, United States, as well as a Master’s degree in Sacred Music from the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music Rome, Italy.
Fr. Orakwe will give a breakout session on Sacred Music in Nigeria.
Rev. Robert Pasley
Father Robert C. Pasley, KCHS, is the Chaplain of the Church Music Association of America and has been a member of the CMAA since his ordination. He is a priest of the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey. Fr. Pasley will teach a breakout session for clergy and seminarians on the basics of singing the Mass. He and William Riccio will also offer a breakout session entitled: “What is the Traditional Latin Mass?”
Because of his association with Msgr. Richard Schuler, he was introduced to the Sacred Music Colloquia and has attended most of the Colloquia held since their foundation in 1990. During the tenure of Msgr. Schuler, he was privileged to be the celebrant at orchestral masses at St Agnes parish, St Paul, Minn. He also serves on the faculty at the Colloquium and has served as Vice President and a member of the board of directors of Sacred Music Magazine.
Born on November 20, 1955 in Woodbury, N.J., Father Pasley received a B.A. in Philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Philadelphia, an M.A. in Dogmatic Theology from Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland, and an M.A. in Education from Seton Hall University, South Orange, N.J.. He was ordained by the Most Reverend George H. Guilfoyle in 1982. After ordination, Father Pasley was stationed as an assistant priest in parishes throughout the diocese. In 1992, he was assigned to teach high school. He taught for eight years and during that time became Vice Principal for Academics at Camden Catholic High School.
On October 13, 2000, he was appointed Rector, by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, of the newly established Tridentine Parish of Mater Ecclesiae, Berlin, N.J. (materlatin.org). Mater Ecclesiae is the first diocesan-run Extraordinary Form parish in the United States. Mater Ecclesiae has a full music program of chant, polyphonic masses, and music based on the principles given by the Church for sacred music. Along with Dr. Timothy McDonnell, Fr. Pasley established the annual Mass of Thanksgiving on the Feast of the Assumption. This Mass, a grand event for the Delaware Valley, features some of the greatest orchestral masses ever composed for the sacred liturgy. Some mass settings that have been used for the Assumption Mass are Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, the Missa Septem Dolorum of Carl H. Biber, Schubert’s Mass in Bb Major, and Mozart’s Missa Brevis in C Major.
Finally, Father Pasley is a Knight Commander of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus. Father Pasley will teach a breakout session on Singing the Mass for clergy and seminarians and also will offer a breakout session with Bill Riccio on “What is the Traditional Latin Mass?”.
William Riccio
William Riccio joins us again on staff for Colloquium XXVII as Master of Ceremonies during the week. His extensive experience with both forms of the Roman Rite have made his assistance invaluable to the CMAA. Bill will work with celebrants and servers to assure the seamless coordination of all our liturgies. Many participants have gained valuable experience and knowledge about serving at both Extraordinary and Ordinary Form Masses in past years by serving with Bill during our liturgies. We know this will again be true in 2017.
In addition, Riccio will offer his expertise in a breakout session with Rev. Robert Pasley entitled: “What is the Traditional Latin Mass?”
Bill Riccio is a frequent contributor to the New Liturgical Movement, offering articles about the Traditional Latin Mass. He serves as Master of Ceremonies at St. Mary’s Norwalk, Norwalk, CT.
Jonathan Ryan
photo courtesy of Joanne Bouknight
We are fortunate indeed to have Jonathan Ryan, Concert Organist, on the CMAA’s Colloquium XXVII faculty this year in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Ryan has been on the faculty of the Colloquium for several years, sharing his extensive experience with Roman Catholic liturgy with Colloquium attendees as a director of various choirs, as a breakout presenter and as an organist. Jonathan will be the organist for three of our liturgies during the week. He will also direct the Office chant choir, with the assistance of Jeffrey Morse.
Jonathan will also present a an organ breakout session during the week on the organ at the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel.
Jonathan Ryan enjoys a multifaceted career as a concert artist, church musician, and pedagogue. Among the few organists distinguished with six First Prize awards at major international and national competitions, he has emerged as one of North America’s premier young concert artists, and is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists.
His solo performances have taken him to celebrated festivals and venues across the USA and Europe, including the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the Cathédrale St-André in Bordeaux, the Fraumünster in Zürich, the inaugural series of the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, CA, and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists and Organ Historical Society.
His two critically-acclaimed solo organ recordings, Influences and A Cathedral’s Voice (Raven 941), feature repertoire ranging from the Renaissance and Baroque, to premiere recordings of George Oldroyd and Ad Wammes, to commissions by Philip Moore and Zachary Wadsworth.
As a church musician, he has held positions at St. John Cantius Church and St. James Cathedral in Chicago, IL, St. Anne Church in Rochester, NY, and currently serves on the staff of the English cathedral-modeled music program of Christ Church in Greenwich, CT, where he directs the church’s semi-professional adult choir, and works with the Choir of Men & Boys and the Girls Choir, and oversees the chorister music training program modeled after the Royal School of Church Music. Jonathan holds degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Eastman School of Music, as well as the Fellow (FAGO) and Choirmaster (ChM) professional certifications from the American Guild of Organists. To find out more about Jonathan, his upcoming performances, and media, visit his website at www.jonathan-ryan.com.
Dr. Edward Schaefer
Edward Schaefer will present four breakout sessions on semiology during the 2017 Colloquium. Dr. Schaefer is professor of music and associate dean of the College of the Arts at the University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville, FL. He is also the director the Florida Schola Cantorum, a group of dedicated singers of chant and polyphony and a deacon for the Diocese of Orlando.
Dr. Schaefer’s area of study focuses primarily on semiology, the study of ancient musical notation, and its impact on contemporary performance of chant. In addition, he is an advocate for the improvement of education through technology. Combining these two interests, he has taught online courses since 2001. Currently, he is teaching a professional development seminar to music professionals across the country on the subject of semiology. He is currently working with the Digital Worlds Institute at UF and L’Ëcole de Chant Grégorien du Choeur Grégorien de Paris to develop interactive software for the learning of the basic vocabulary and grammar of the notations of St.-Gall and Loan.
Dr. Schaefer is the translator of Daniel Saulnier’s Les Modes Grégoriens and Le Chant Grégorien, both published by Solesmes. He is also the author of Catholic Music Through the Ages, published by Hillenbrand, and auther/editor of Missa Cantata: A Notated Sacramentary, Cantáta Evangélia: A Notated Book of Gospels, and numerous articles on various aspects of sacred music.
Scott Turkington
Scott Turkington, Organist and Choirmaster of Holy Family Church and Holy Family Academy in Minneapolis, Minnesota, joins the Colloquium faculty again for 2017. He will direct the Chant Conducting choir for the Colloquium, as well as the Mendelssohn Polyphony choir. In addition, he will discuss the Ward method in two breakout sessions, including choral demonstrations by his students. He will also participate in a panel discussion about children’s programs.
Scott will also be teaching the CMAA Beginning Ward course at Duquesne University in the summer of 2017 during the Summer Chant courses.
Prior to joining the staff at Holy Family in 2013, Turkington served as principal organist and choirmaster of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Charleston, SC. Until 2010, he served as organist and choirmaster for the Roman Catholic Basilica of Saint John the Evangelist in Stamford, Connecticut, where he conducted a choir in a program of weekly polyphonic Mass settings and Gregorian chant. Before accepting the position at St. John’s in 1998, he was Assistant Organist and Conductor at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. While at the National Shrine, he played for over 500 services each year, and appeared on live national television dozens of times.
He has been Music Director at the Church of the Covenant in Boston; Music Teacher and Organist at St. Paul’s Choir School in Harvard Square, under Theodore Marier. A native of Minneapolis, he studied music at the University of Minnesota, the Boston Conservatory of Music and The Catholic University of America. His former teachers include Heinrich Fleischer, Phillip Steinhaus, and George Faxon.
In frequent demand as an organ recitalist, he has played innumerable recitals in the Northeast, having made his New York debut at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He has performed for a national convention of the Organ Historical Society, and is a featured performer on the Organ Historical Society’s compact disc, Organs of Baltimore. In 1994, his choir performed for Pope John Paul II at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
He is editor of A Gregorian Chant Masterclass by Theodore Marier, published by the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut. This book and its companion CD feature the Stamford Schola Gregoriana and the nuns of Regina Laudis, both conducted by Turkington.
Msgr. Andrew Raymond Wadsworth
We are delighted to welcome Monsignor Andrew R. Wadsworth to the 2017 Colloquium as a plenary speaker. He will speak to us on: “The Chant Hymns of the Revised Liturgy of the Hours”. Monsignor serves as the Executive Director for the ICEL Secretariat, which is located in Washington, D.C. The Secretariat serves as a coordinating group implementing the directives of the Episcopal Board and its Executive Committee under Wadsworth’s direction as Executive Director. Monsignor Wadsworth is also the Moderator of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Washington, D.C. at St. Thomas Apostle Catholic Church.
He is a priest of the Archdiocese of Westminster in the United Kingdom as well as an accomplished musician. His first degree was in music (majoring in voice and piano). After graduate studies in choral conducting and piano accompaniment at Trinity College London and the Royal Academy of Music, he trained as a répétiteur with English National Opera. In 1985, he was awarded the coveted Ricordi Prize for Choral Conducting. As a singer, he has performed extensively and has recorded as a soloist with the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge under the direction of the late Dr Mary Berry, the person who, more than anyone else in the whole of the UK, served as a bridge for Gregorian chant to cross between the preconciliar and postconciliar periods.
Msgr. Wadsworth holds graduate degrees in Italian from the University of London and Theology from the Pontifical University of Maynooth. Ordained in 1990, he has had a wide range of pastoral experience in parishes, schools, universities and hospitals. A former professor of Ecclesiastical Latin and New Testament Greek at the Westminster Diocesan Seminary, he has also taught Italian at college and university level. From 1998-2009, he was full-time chaplain to Harrow School where he also collaborated on a number of performance and recording projects in choral music and music theater. His published research is in relation to Dante, Marian studies, and the history of liturgical translations in English since the Second Vatican Council.
In recent years, he has traveled extensively, directing a number of seminars for priests concentrating on the ars celebrandi in both forms of the Roman Rite. He was appointed Executive Director of ICEL in Fall 2009 and currently resides in Washington DC where the Commission’s Secretariat is based. He is in demand as a speaker and has lectured and conducted workshops on the implementation of the new translation of the Roman Missal both throughout the United States and in England, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Canada, France and Italy since its implementation.
Dr. Paul Weber
We welcome Dr. Paul Weber who will again be on the faculty for the CMAA Summer Colloquium this year. He will serve as organist for two liturgies this year, as well as moderating the panel discussion on Children’s programs at this year’s Colloquium. He will also present a Masterclass as an organ breakout session during the week on the organ at the St. Thomas Aquinas chapel. We can accept two masterclass organists and one alternate for this session. If you wish to participate, please contact us at programs@musicasacra.com to sign up for this session in advance. We will be accepting participants on a first-come, first-served basis.
Paul Weber is a composer, conductor and organist in New Orleans, where he founded and directs the professional vocal ensemble Krewe du Voix and conducts the semi-professional Trinity Choir at Trinity Episcopal Church. As a concert organist, Dr. Weber has been heard throughout the United States and in Europe. He has won prizes at national and international organ competitions, including the Arthur Poister competition (U.S.) and Erfurt Domprediger competition (Germany). Recent performances include concerts at the Piccolo-Spoleto Festival, East Carolina University, national conventions of the Organ Historical Society and Church Music Assocation of America, and at the cathedrals in Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Paul and Louisville.
A prolific composer, especially for voices, Dr. Weber’s choral works are published by Choralife. Previously, he has held positions in churches in Louisville and Pittsburgh, and founded the Sacred Music program at Franciscan University of Steubenville where he directed the university ensembles. Dr. Weber is a graduate of Lawrence University and Yale University. His organ teachers include Frank Rippl, Wolfgang Rübsam, Martin Jean and Thomas Murray.
