Lorenz Maycher VTOrganAcademy@aol.com -------------- Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He teaches organ and piano at Lafayette College and is assistant director of music at DeSales University. He was formerly organist at the historic First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City, for ten years. A native of Oklahoma, he has studied organ with Margaret Lindsay, Thomas Matthews, Clyde Holloway, and William Watkins, and is a graduate of Rice University. While a student at Rice, Lorenz won the Gibbons Prize in organ, placed first in the San Antonio Pipe Organ Competition, and won the Houston American Guild of Organist's (AGO) Mary Ellen Bond Award. In 1989, Lorenz was a featured recitalist at the Organ Historical Society (OHS) national convention held in New Orleans. He has since played for eight OHS national conventions and was recipient of an OHS E.Power Biggs Fellowship in 1990. He has played over 50 recitals on the 1830 Appleton organ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and has appeared in recital in such places as Wichita State University, Rollins College, Irvine Auditorium (University of Pennsylvania), and Philadelphia's Lord and Taylor Department Store (on the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ). In recent years, Lorenz has participated in several projects devoted to the music of Leo Sowerby. In 1994 he recorded an all-Sowerby disc on the 1949 Aeolian-Skinner organ at First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas, for Raven Records. The following year he was invited by the Leo Sowerby Foundation to give the world premiere performances of Sowerby's recently discovered 1958 Nostalgic Poem and Heroic Poem in a Washington, D.C., concert honoring organist William Watkins. He later gave the New York premiere at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University, and the Chicago premiere at Fourth Presbyterian Church. He has played three of Sowerby's five works for organ and orchestra, including the first performance in over 40 years of Concert Piece in a concert with the Richmond Symphony and a performance of Classic Concerto with the Buffalo Philharmonic. In 1998, he performed Sowerby's seldom heard Sinfonia Brevis in a Baltimore AGO memorial concert to organist Rodney Hansen, to whom the work is dedicated. He has participated in Sowerby festivals in Chicago, New York, Richmond, and Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest Sowerby adventure is the release of a new compact disc entitled, "Music of Leo Sowerby and Frederic Chopin," recorded on the magnificent 1903 Hutchings-Votey organ at First Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City. This album also includes performances by organist Charles Callahan, mezzo-soprano Gwendolyn Jones, pianist Tana Bawden, and conductor William Watkins in the first professionally issued recordings of Sowerby's Three Psalms, Songs of Faith and Penitence, and O Perfect Love. Lorenz has also recently (January 2004) recorded a compact disc called "The Aeolian- Skinner Sound" on the 1955 Aeolian-Skinner organ at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This disc features organ favorites by Bach, Handel, Franck, Dupre, Reger, Vierne, Widor, and others, and has received widespread acclaim. Lorenz's latest venture is the forming of The Vermont Organ Academy, a website devoted to the pipe organ and its music. This site features news articles, interviews, photos, historic documents and recorded sound bites, an advice column by Charles Callahan, a book/CD store, and more. In addition to the new recording of Sowerby's music, the academy is working on several other recording projects, including a compilation of historic recordings of the great American concert organist Walter Baker for release on disc in early 2005. The Diapason magazine, in a review of Lorenz's recital on a 1922 E.M. Skinner organ in Lewiston, Maine, said, "His musical instincts are of the highest order. In addition, he enjoys what he is doing, and this characteristic communicates to the audience, who gave him a spontaneous standing ovation. Hear him play, if you ever have the opportunity. You will not be disappointed!"