Summer Programs
Organ Academy
Organs of Oberlin (l-r): Fairchild Chapel's Brombaugh Op. 25, Finney Chapel's C.B. Fisk, and Warner Concert Hall's Flentrop and Harrold organs.
Photo credit: David Kazimir and Julie Gulenko
The Organ as Time Machine
A Gateway to History, Culture, and Endless Possibilities
Sunday, June 22-Saturday, June 28, 2025
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: May 1
This year's summer organ academy explores the notion of the Pipe Organ as a gateway to historical culture and practice. Through the vast repertory and styles of organs in western culture, we open the doors to not only musical discovery but also the world and culture from which art is born.
This intensive, residential program offered to organists ages 13 - 25 (students under 15 years of age must be accompanied by a parent and live off-campus).
Sessions of daily lessons, master classes, sacred music skills, improvisation, harpsichord, clavichord, and preparation for college auditions and competitions are included in this week. Midweek the group tours organs and other sites in Cleveland, then off to Sandusky to Cedar Point Amusement Park!
Jonathan William Moyer, David S. Boe Chair and Associate Professor of Organ specializes in a vast repertoire from the Renaissance to the 21st century and has performed throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Japan. professor of organ at Oberlin, Moyer also serves as organist of the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland and has been a visiting lecturer in organ at the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck, Germany. Recent concerts include Bachkirche (Arnstadt), St. Jakobikirche (Lübeck), Ludgerikirche (Norden), Laurenskerk (Alkmaar), Marktkirchethe (Hannover), the National Convention of the American Organ Historical Society (Rochester, N.Y.), the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, D.C.), St. Sulpice (Paris), Notre Dame de Bergerac, and J.S. Bach’s complete Clavierübung III at the German Reformed Church in Budapest. He has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, the Oberlin Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, Quire Cleveland, Concert Artists of Baltimore, and the Handel Choir of Baltimore.
Mark Edwards Associate Professor of Harpsichord, has presented solo recitals at numerous major festivals and series, among them the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Bozar, and the Montreal Baroque Festival and Clavecin en concert. He has performed concertos with ensembles including Il Gardellino, Neobarock, and Ensemble Caprice.
Angela Kraft Cross Visiting Guest Artist is based in the Bay Area of California. She graduated from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music in 1980 with bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Organ Performance. She then earned her Doctor of Medicine degree at Loma Linda University, where she subsequently completed her residency in ophthalmology. In 1993, she completed her Master of Music degree in Piano Performance at the College of Notre Dame with Thomas LaRatta. Her organ teachers have included Louis Robilliard, Marie-Louise Langlais, Sandra Soderlund, S. Leslie Grow, William Porter, and Garth Peacock. She has studied composition with Pamela Decker.
Kraft Cross has performed extensively on both organ and piano, having given over five hundred concerts across the United States, in Canada, England, Holland, France, Hungary, Korea, Lesotho and Guam, including such venues as Notre Dame Cathedral, St. Sulpice and the Madeleine in Paris, Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Thomas Church in New York City, Methuen Memorial Music Hall and Trinity Church in Boston, E. Power Biggs’s organ at Harvard, and Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Southwark Cathedral in London.
Kraft Cross has released eight solo CD albums, recorded locally in California as well as in Paris, Lyon, and London. Three of her organ albums have received critical acclaim in The American Organist magazine. She has served as the organist of the Congregational Church of San Mateo since 1993 and is currently the Artist in Residence. She is also a regular organ recitalist at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.
In addition to her musical career, Kraft Cross retired in 2011 having worked for 22 years as an ophthalmic surgeon at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Redwood City and now volunteers as an ophthalmologist at Samaritan House in Redwood City. She is committed to the musical education of young people and since 1997 has been instrumental in organizing an annual Organ Camp for young pianists headquartered at her church. Kraft Cross is the founding director of the San Francisco Peninsula Organ Academy, a nonprofit organization formed in 2014 to support young concert organists with scholarships on short intensive overseas study trips.
Organist Kirk Michael Rich has performed across the US in venues such as the Kennedy Center (Washington, D. C.), St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue (New York City), and for three national conventions of the American Guild of Organists. A laureate of several organ competitions, Kirk has twice been a prize-winning finalist in the American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance (2014 and 2016). His performances have been broadcast nationally on American Public Media’s Pipedreams program. A passionate collaborative artist, Kirk has served as organist for two international tours with the Royal School of Church Music America National Choir, including cathedral residencies in Dublin, St. Albans, and Salisbury.
Kirk became Director of Music at St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church in Harrods Creek (Louisville), Kentucky in August 2023. July 2025 marks the St. Francis Parish Choir’s first European tour, with performances in Paris and a weeklong residency at Lincoln Cathedral in the UK. Prior to coming to St. Francis, Kirk served for five years as Director of Music at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta.
Kirk holds degrees in organ performance from the Oberlin College Conservatory, the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, and a doctorate from the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music. Additional study has been with Francesco Cera in Italy and Ludger Lohmann in Germany. He holds a Professional Certificate in the Lister-Sink Method of Injury-Preventive Keyboard Technique from Salem College, studying piano with Barbara Lister-Sink.
David Kazimir Curator of Organs, has performed in major churches and cathedrals in Boston, Cleveland, New York, and Washington, D.C., and overseas in Cambridge, England; Rhonda, Wales; Lausanne, Switzerland; and at St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. A member of the staff of the C.B. Fisk organ-building firm from 2001 to 2010, Kazimir was involved in the construction of more than 20 instruments, including Fisk’s magnum opus at the Cathedral in Lausanne, Switzerland—the first American organ in a European cathedral. From 2010 to 2015, he served as curator of organs and carillons and lecturer in music at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. He currently serves as curator of organs at Oberlin Conservatory.