Santa Barbara Music Club 50th Season Free Concerts

The SANTA BARBARA MUSIC CLUB, the largest year-round concert series in Santa Barbara County, celebrates its 50th year of presenting its stellar concert series!  Featured in its Saturday afternoon concerts are outstanding performances by instrumental and vocal soloists and chamber music ensembles.

 On Saturday, November 9, at 3:00 PM the Santa Barbara Music Club will present, “Three Organists,” another program in its popular series of beautiful classical-music concerts. Presented in collaboration with the Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, the concert features organists Emma Lou Diemer, Steven Hodson, and Thomas Joyce playing music by Diemer, Duruflé, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, and J.S. Bach.  The concert is free and is located at First United Methodist Church, 305 E. Anapamu Street in Santa Barbara.

Composer and organist Emma Lou Diemer is an active keyboard performer (piano, organ, harpsichord, synthesizer), and has given concerts of her own music at Washington National Cathedral, St. Mary’s Cathedral and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, and elsewhere.  She studied composition at the Yale Music School (BM, 1949; MM, 1950) and at the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D, 1960). She studied in Brussels, Belgium on a Fulbright Scholarship and spent two summers of composition study at the Berkshire Music Center.  In 1971 she moved from the East Coast to teach composition and theory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she was instrumental in founding the electronic/computer music program. In 1991 she became Professor Emeritus at UCSB.

Steven Hodson is Professor of Music and Director of Piano Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, where he teaches choral conducting, piano, and organ. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Lewis and Clark College with emphasis in piano performance, a master’s degree from the University of Oregon, also with emphasis in piano performance, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he accompanied the top graduate choir.

A native of Cambridge, England, Thomas Joyce, organist, moved to Santa Barbara in the summer of 2014, and began his position as Minister of Keyboard Music at Trinity Episcopal Church. He also teaches private lessons in piano, organ, voice, and musicianship, and is active in the Santa Barbara community as a keyboard accompanist and collaborative artist. Thomas is an adjunct instructor of organ at Westmont College and choral accompanist/director of the Women’s Choir at Santa Barbara City College.

The pipe organ at FUMC is considered a premiere instrument in the city of Santa Barbara. A three-manual Artcraft pipe organ was installed during construction of the present sanctuary in 1927; it remained in service up until 1961, when the church purchased a three-manual Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ of 31 ranks.  In 1993, a 61-pipe Trompette-en-chamade was added as a memorial gift, installed above the altar by the Schantz Organ Company of Orville, Ohio.  In 1999 the same firm installed a new three-manual console, featuring multiple memory systems and capture action.  Most recently, in 2003, Schantz brought the organ to gorgeous tonal completion with the addition of 20 new ranks of pipes, as well as three digital ranks of 32′ pitch stops. The added registers include an entirely new Great division mounted on slider chests; unenclosed diapason pipework from the new Great is now framed in classical pipe façades on both sides of the Chancel.  The instrument stands today at 52 ranks, totaling over 2,500 pipes, plus three digital pedal stops.  It is the third largest pipe organ in Santa Barbara.