Organ Benefit Program

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Make a Joyful Noise Benefit Concert for Stephens College Chapel Organ

Wednesday, March 8, 2017, at 7:30 p.m.

Firestone Baars Chapel, Stephens College

Special Recognition

It is with deepest appreciation that we acknowledge the gift of Margaret Koegle ’48 of West Chester Township, Ohio, whose generous donation enabled interim repairs and the concert to take place.

Dr. Haig Mardirosian Organist

Trent Rash Tenor

Darrell J. Jordan Baritone

The Stephens College Concert Choir Emily Edgington Andrews, Director Anthony Hernandez, Rehearsal Pianist

Prairie Strings Quartet

Siri Geenen and Solveig Geenen, Violins Morgan Owen, Viola Mary Manulik, Cello

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Welcome

Chris Rigby, Director of Philanthropy, Stephens College

Toccata in F, BWV 540. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Johann Sebastian Bach . .

Ave Maria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charles Gounod Organ Concerto No. 5 in F, Op. 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Frideric Handel Larghetto Allegro Alla Siciliana Presto History of Aeolian-Skinner, Op. 1186 and the Importance of its Restoration.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dr. Haig Mardirosian

and John Panning, Dobson Organ Company Where’er You Walk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . George Frideric Handel .

Fuge, Kanzone, und Epilog, Op. 85, No. 3 for Organ, Violin and Women’s Choir “Credo in vitam venturi saeculi”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sigfrid Karg-Elert

Closing

Dr. Dianne Lynch, President, Stephens College Toccata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Louis Vierne

A light reception will follow and include an opportunity to visit with Dr. Mardirosian and Mr. Panning about the organ and restoration plans.

Acknowledgments The Stephens College Concert Choir Tia Baker Tanneal Cheshire Catera Combs Rachel Cornell Taylor Crews Madison Crist Dana Degnan Lauren Harmon Tracie Huffman Heather Manning Lili Marean Ania Martin Brooke Matthews Alexandria Morgan Katie Orr Cameron Pille Laura Wenzel Jennifer Wilcox La’Keisha Wilson Creative Trent Rash, Assistant Professor of Vocal Arts, Event Coordinator Chris Rigby, Director of Philanthropy Dr. Gail Humphries Mardirosian, Dean of the School of Performing Arts Chelsea Andes, Administrative Assistant, School of Performing Arts Office of Marketing and Communications Management Sidny Groves, Stage Manager Sicily Mathenia, House Manager Ushers Dana Degnan Lauren Harmon Katie Orr Hope Pena Delainey Phillips Special Thanks Michael Burke, Director of Production Greg Mankey, Director of Facilities Management Chandra Valentine, SC Events and Dobson Organ Company, Lake City, Iowa John Panning

About the Performers and Speakers Dr. Haig Mardirosian is dean of the College of Arts and Letters and professor of music at The University of Tampa. He has earned international standing as a composer, conductor, concert organist and recording artist. He has performed in important international festivals and has 20 recordings to his credit on various labels in the United States and Europe. As a writer and critic, Mardirosian has contributed nearly 1,500 reviews and features to a variety of publications. For several years, he served as music critic for the Baltimore News-American. He has published in Forecast, The American Organist, The Diapason, the Journal of American Organ Building and Fanfare (for which he was a reviewer of new recordings for 25 years). For 10 years, he contributed a monthly opinion column for The American Organist, and much of its content will appear in his new book, “Vox Humana,” published by MorningStar Music Publishers, and available this spring.

Mardirosian has been broadcast in live and recorded performances on major global outlets like Northwest German Radio, West German Radio and TV, Belgian Radio, New York’s WQXR and American Public Media. He has performed live broadcast concerts from Harvard University’s Busch-Reisinger Museum.

Prior to his appointment at The University of Tampa in 2009, Mardirosian served 33 years as professor of music at American University in Washington, D.C., and was senior vice provost and dean of academic affairs. While in Washington, he was also organist and choirmaster of the Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes, known nationally for its professional choral program and high standard of music.

Mardirosian, is married to Dr. Gail Humphries Mardirosian, Stephens’ dean of the School of Performing Arts. He has a Bachelor of Music, Master of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Trent Rash is an assistant professor of music at Stephens College, where he teaches applied private voice lessons and the musical theatre repertory class. He also directs the popular A Dicken’s Victorian Christmas and is the musical theatre coordinator for the Summer Theatre Institute. Rash has participated in more than 40 musicals as a director, musical director or actor.

Outside of Stephens, he is the assistant director of music ministry at the St. Thomas More Newman Center and teaches students of all ages through RashMusik, his private voice studio. Rash is also one of the co-founders and singers in the mixed vocal ensemble Elan, which performs a varied repertoire of choral music. He worked with Jerry Herman in an auditioned master class as an undergraduate.

Other solo engagements include concert appearances at the Missouri Theatre, in the Odyssey Chamber Music Series, with the Missouri Contemporary Ballet and as the tenor soloist in Bach’s Magnificat and Handel’s Messiah. In 2014, his musical, Starting With My Voice, written with friend and colleague Audra Sergel, was selected and featured in the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival.

He earned a Master of Music and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Darrell J. Jordan is a visiting guest artist in the Music program at Stephens College.

A lyric baritone, he has been praised for his “resplendent presence” (Chicago Classical Review) and his “shining, beautiful voice” (Broadway World), as well as been called the “star of the show” (Columbia Heartbeat).

A St. Louis native, Jordan’s recent solo engagements include J.S. Bach’s Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, Vaughan Williams’ Hodie, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Coronation Mass. He recently was a resident opera artist with the Missouri Symphony Society.

Jordan has also appeared with Winter Opera Saint Louis, Haymarket Opera Company, Gateway Opera, Amherst Early Music Festival, the Institute for 17th Century Music, the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, the Choral Arts Alliance of Missouri, and the Odyssey Chamber Music Series. Jordan made his debut with the St. Louis Opera Collective last fall.

He was selected as a national semifinalist for the Orpheus Vocal Competition, and has been a national finalist in The American Prize Vocal Competition. Jordan is a member and co-founder of Vox Nova, a nationally recognized vocal chamber ensemble. He has his M.M. and B.A. from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

John Panning is tonal director of the Dobson Pipe Organ Builders in Lake City, Iowa. The son of a Lutheran minister and educator, he was exposed at an early age to the pipe organ and its music. Although he didn’t start piano lessons until the sixth grade, Panning learned to play his mother’s Estey Cottage Organ when he was about 7. He began studying organ in high school and has regularly played for church services ever since.

After graduating from high school, Panning worked for Hammes-Foxe Organs Inc., a Milwaukee-area organ builder. Two years later, he joined the Dobson Pipe Organ Builders. At the time, the shop was small, so Panning worked in all areas of organ building as well as in service and tuning. He took a special interest in the tonal aspects of organs and worked closely with the late Robert Sperling in voicing and tonal finishing. In 1992, Panning set up the company’s pipe shop and made the first pipes in Lake City. Eventually, he began working with the tonal design of new instruments and determining the pipe scales, which led to his current position as Dobson’s tonal director.

Panning has served two terms as national secretary of the Organ Historical Society, two terms as secretary of the American Institute of Organbuilders, and is the North American editor for the Journal of the International Society of Organbuilders, a position he has held since 1991.

About the Stephens College Chapel Organ The organ in the Firestone Baars Chapel was built by the preeminent Aeolian-Skinner Company of Boston and installed in 1956. The instrument, an Opus 1186, is unique, its geometric shape and clean lines clearly influenced by the chapel’s famous architect, Eero Saarinen, who designed the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

Although treated with loving care, today the 60-year-old organ has a number of repair issues; among the most serious is the poor condition of the leather bellows inside the organ. In addition to other restorations, the pipes need tuning, regulating and cleaning. Other needed repairs include smoothing chipped keys and broken stop tabs. The estimated cost of restoring the organ to its original splendor is $190,000.

The Aeolian-Skinner Company was an important American builder of many notable pipe organs from the time of its inception as the Skinner Organ Company in 1901 until its closure in 1972. To own a Skinner or Aeolian-Skinner instrument meant the mark of high excellence and prestige. Another Skinner pipe organ is located in Columbia at the Missouri United Methodist Church.

About Firestone Baars Chapel In 1939, then Stephens College President James Madison Wood met with 20 students and posed this question: If they could have one more building on campus, what would it be? Their answer was a chapel. That night, each student at the meeting placed a dollar in an envelope and slipped it under the door of the student body president with a note stating the donations should be used to start a fund to build a chapel on campus.

The architect chosen for this work was Eliel Saarinen. However, Eliel died in 1950.

Three years later, Eliel’s son, Eero Saarinen, who had worked with his father for 17 years, was commissioned to finish the chapel. Eero Saarinen also designed the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, as well as other landmark building such as the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport and the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex in Holmdel Township, N.J. The son’s design was different from his father’s: A cylinder shape for the building was replaced with a cube and the dome with a pyramid.

The Firestone Baars Chapel was dedicated in 1957 as a nondenominational chapel.

In 2002, the chapel was named to the Columbia Historic Preservation Commission’s Notable Properties Listing. The building features a square plan and an entrance at each of the compass points. The chapel symbolizes commitment to individual spiritual development and worship, and is the site of campus gatherings and activities.

About Music at Stephens Music has been a cherished part of campus life at Stephens College for more than a century, with the late 1800s showing a flourishing of interest. Led by a succession of virtuosos trained at the most prestigious institutions of Europe and New England, Stephens’ music program enjoyed international renown. Basil Deane Gauntlett (1885-1946), lauded in his day as one of the world’s great pianists, led the program from 1909 until the year of his death.

In those decades and beyond, Stephens women enjoyed a remarkable number of academic and performance opportunities in music. Students engaged in private study of voice, piano, organ, harp and a range of orchestral strings and winds. Ensembles included a variety of choral, chamber and even orchestral ensembles, augmented in performance by professionals from the St. Louis and Kansas City symphonies. An impressive repertory of operatic works were staged on campus, as well, including Aida, La bohème, Dido and Aeneas, The Marriage of Figaro and Madama Butterfly, to name a few. The community embraced these performances and crowds were large. Today, Stephens welcomes the community to free monthly concerts, and students and groups continue to perform throughout the community.

Stephens Vocal Arts faculty are committed to preparing women for music careers in the 21st century. Newly formed in 2015, our Vocal Performance B.F.A. empowers young women to find their best voice through exceptional training in Vocal Jazz, Classical Voice and Musical Theatre. Students engage in challenging academic courses in music theory, sight singing, music history, vocal diction and vocal repertory. Applied Music opportunities reflect our diverse approach with private lessons and ensembles focusing on Vocal Jazz, Musical Theatre and traditional Classical Repertory. Such diverse training is unique among college programs and is designed to provide the foundation for growth in Stephens Music for many years to come.

dream up.