July 7 - 14, 2024

4th ANNUAL REUTER ORGAN FESTIVAL

Featuring Raúl Prieto Ramírez, Käthe Wright Kaufman, Polyphony: Voices of New Mexico, Maxine Thévenot, and Stephen Tharp

Raúl Prieto Ramírez

July 7, 2024 | 3:00 PM

“The powerful personality, passionate expressiveness, gift for communication, and outstanding technique of Spanish organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez make him shine in a wide range of repertoire and styles”. (Los Angeles Philharmonic)

With words such as “sizzling”, iconoclastic”, “impeccable”, and “transcendent” used to describe his performances, Raúl Prieto Ramírez is the first Spanish organist in recent times to establish himself among the elite of the international pipe organ scene. 

Raúl Prieto Ramírez is San Diego Civic Organist where he presents over 55 concerts a year - most of which entirely from memory. His career is primarily that of a concert artist with a busy schedule that takes him to major festivals and concert halls around the world. He is also regularly featured for master classes both sides of the Atlantic. His performances have been described by critics as “sizzling”, iconoclastic”, “impeccable”, and “transcendent”.

At age 27, as the first Organist of Spain’s National Concert Hall in Madrid, he increased attendance by a multiple of 30 and critics hailed him as one of the most exciting talents in the music scene. He later founded the International Organ Festival/Academy in Barcelona, the Sursa American Organ Competition in partnership with Moscow and served as organ consultant for both religious and civil institutions.

A former student of Ludger Lohmann and Leonid Sintsev, Mr. Ramírez expanded his musicological-informed interpretation skills with Marie-Claire Alain, Guy Bovet, Lionel Rogg, Zsigmond Szathmáry, and Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini among others. The premieres of his works have been recorded and broadcast in Spain, including a concerto for organ and orchestra that was premiered in Barcelona.

In June 2016, Mr. Ramirez and his wife, Spanish pianist Maria Teresa Sierra, were featured duo artists at the American Guild of Organists’ national convention in Houston.

Mr. Ramírez’s first compact discs on Brilliant Classics were recorded at Milan Cathedral and at the Palau de la Música in Barcelona.

Raúl Prieto Ramírez is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.

Learn more about the artist here.

Käthe Wright Kaufman

July 9, 2024 | 7:00 PM

Käthe Wright Kaufman is the Associate Director of Music and Worship Arts at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where she serves as principal keyboardist and accompanist for services, oversees maintenance of the 1982 Casavant Frères organ, and aids the Director of Music and Worship Arts in shaping and supporting a vibrant worship and music program.

 She also serves the Candler School of Theology at Emory University as Chapel Organist. Previously, she served as Organ Scholar at Peterborough Cathedral (2019-2020) and Truro Cathedral (2016-2017) in the UK. A native of Chicago, Käthe was launched into church music early on when she became a chorister in the choir of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Evanston, Illinois at age eight. Her growing love of the Anglican choral tradition inspired her to begin her organ studies a few years later with James Brown at the Music Institute of Chicago. For both undergraduate and graduate study, she attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where she studied organ, harpsichord, and improvisation with William Porter and Edoardo Bellotti, as well as organ with David Higgs for her Master’s degree. Käthe has performed for the radio program Pipedreams Live!, and she has performed venues such as St. Thomas Church, NYC; Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville; Clare College Chapel, Cambridge; St. Edmundsbury Cathedral; Peterborough Cathedral; Truro Cathedral; and St. Michael’s Cornhill, London.  She has received several awards, including Eastman’s Gerald Barnes Award for Excellence in Pipe Organ (2013), the inaugural VanDelinder Prizes in Liturgical Organ Skills at Christ Church, Rochester (2014 & 2015), and first place in the West Chester University International Organ Competition (2015). She was recently featured as a performer at the American Guild of Organists’ National Convention in Seattle (2022). Käthe is an Associate of the American Guild of Organists and a published composer with Selah Publishing Company.

Polyphony: Voices of New Mexico

July 12, 2024| 7:00 PM

Polyphony: Voices of New Mexico, Maxine Thévenot Artistic Director & Conductor
in collaboration with NYC-based organist Stephen Tharp, presents the world premiere performance of a newly commissioned work by English composer Cecilia McDowall, commissioned in memory of Roan Mulholland. The concert also includes Scottish composer James MacMillan’s Cantos Sagrados and Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho’s Offrande for cello and organ, featuring cellist Amy Huzjak.

In writing this work MacMillan wanted to compose something which was both timeless and contemporary, both sacred and secular. The three poems are concerned with political repression in Latin America and are deliberately coupled with traditional religious texts to emphasize a deeper solidarity with the poor of that sub-continent.

It was MacMillan's interest in Liberation Theology which made him combine the poems of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina with the texts of the Latin mass in Búsqueda (an earlier music-theatre work) and which led him to attempt a similar synthesis of ideas in Cantos Sagrados.

The voices in Ariel Dorfman’s poems belong to those who suffer a particular type of political repression: the ‘disappearance’ of political prisoners. Ana Maria Mendoza’s poem about the Virgin of Guadeloupe tackles the same problem by asking a more fundamental cultural and historical question.

Come and experience one of James MacMillan's most powerful choral and organ works.

Stephen Tharp

July 14, 2024 | 3:00 PM

“Stephen Tharp plays as if the music were in his life-blood: musical, spacious, accurate, persuasive, convincing.” –Organists’ Review

Stephen Tharp, hailed as “the organist for the connoisseur” (organ – Journal für die Orgel, Germany), “the thinking person’s performer” (Het Orgel), “every bit the equal of any organist” (The American Organist Magazine) and “the consummate creative artist” (Michael Barone, Pipedreams), is recognized as one of the great concert organists of our age.

Having played more than 1600 concerts across more than 60 tours worldwide, Stephen Tharp has built one of the most well-respected international careers in the world, earning him the reputation as the most traveled concert organist of his generation. He is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World, and has been given the 2011 International Performer of the Year Award by the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists. In May 2015, he was given the Paul Creston Award which recognizes artistic excellence by a significant figure in church music and the performing arts.

His list of performances since 1987 includes such distinguished venues as St. Bavo, Haarlem; Notre-Dame de Paris, St. Eustache, Paris; Notre Dame de Chartres; Ste. Croix, Bordeaux; Auditorium Maurice Ravel, Lyon; The Hong Kong Cultural Centre; the Town Halls of Sydney and Adelaide, Australia; Tchaikovsky Hall, Moscow; the Tonhalle, Zürich; the Philharmonc Halls in Berlin and Luxembourg; the Duomo, Milano, Italy; the cathedrals in Berlin, Köln, München, Münster, Passau und Monaco, and the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, Germany; the Frauenkirche, Dresden; Igreja da Lapa, Porto, Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Lissabon; Antwerp Cathedral, Belgium; Dvorak Hall, Prague; the Hallgrimskirkja, Reykjavik, Iceland; The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas; Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; The Kimmel Center, Philadelphia; The Riverside Church, New York City; Rice University, Houston; Spivey Hall, Atlanta; and Severance Hall, Cleveland.

 

He has given master classes at Yale University; Westminster Choir College; the Cleveland Institute of Music, Bethel University (St. Paul, MN), Rice University (Houston, TX); the Hochschulen für Musik in Stuttgart, Trossingen and Bochum (Germany); and for chapters of the American Guild of Organists. He has also adjudicated for competitions at the Juilliard School, Northwestern University and served more recently as Juror for the Grand Prix de Chartres 2018.

 

Stephen Tharp remains an important champion of new organ music, and continues to commission and premiere numerous compositions for the instrument. The first such piece was Jean Guillou’s symphonic poem Instants, Op. 57, which Tharp premiered at King’s College, Cambridge, England in February 1998. Works dedicated to him include George Baker’s Prière Grégorienne (2018), Danse Diabolique (2016), Variations on “Rouen" (2010); David Briggs’ Toccata Labyrinth (2006); Samuel Adler’s Sonata (2005); Eugenio Fagiani’s Psalm 100 (2009) and Stèle (2003); Thierry Escaich’s Trois Poèmes (2002); Philip Moore’s Sinfonietta (2001); Anthony Newman’s Tombeau d'Igor Stravinsky (2000), Toccata and Fuga Sinfonica on BACH (1999) and the Second Symphony (1992); Martha Sullivan's Slingshot Shivaree for Organ and Percussion (1999); and Morgan Simmons Exercitatio Fantastica (1997). Himself a composer, Tharp was commissioned by Cologne Cathedral, Germany to compose for Easter Sunday, 2006 his Easter Fanfares for the inauguration of the organ’s new en chamade Tuba stops, as well Disney’s Trumpets, composed in February 2011 for the organ at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, where it was premiered by the composer the following month.

 

In April 2008, Stephen Tharp was named the Official Organist for the NY visit of Pope Benedict XVI, playing for three major events attended by more than 60,000 people that were broadcast live worldwide. Mr. Tharp’s playing has also been heard on both English and Irish national television, on Radio Prague, orgelnieuws.nl in the Netherlands, and in the U. S. on American Public Media’s Pipedreams. In both 2005 and 2011, Pipedreams broadcast entire programs dedicated exclusively to his career, making him one of the few organists in the world so honored.

 

He is also an active chamber musician nationwide, having performed on organ, piano and harpsichord with artists such as Thomas Hampson, Itzhak Perlman, Jennifer Larmore, Rachel Barton Pine, the American Boychoir (James Litton, conductor), the St. Thomas Choir (John Scott, conductor, in Duruflé’s Requiem), and at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. His 16 solo organ recordings can be found on the labels Acis Productions, JAV Recordings, Aeolus, Naxos, Organum and Ethereal, and are available from the Organ Historical Society (www.ohscatalog.org), JAV Recordings (www.pipeorgancds.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.com).

 

His commercial release The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux on Aeolus Recordings, received the 2009 Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Germany’s premier critic’s prize for recordings, as well as the French 5 Diapason award. The release was celebrated in October 2010 with Mr. Tharp’s performance of the complete Demessieux works live over three concerts at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Stephen Tharp plays St. Bavo, Haarlem, The Netherlands on the JAV label was called “the most beautiful CD of 2009" by Resmusica in France.

 

Stephen Tharp earned his BA degree, magna cum laude, from Illinois College, Jacksonville, IL and his MM from Northwestern University, Chicago, where he studied with Rudolf Zuiderveld and Wolfgang Rübsam, respectively. He has also worked privately with Jean Guillou in Paris.