A performance by organist Dr. Huw Lewis of the Hope College music faculty will be featured beginning the week of Monday, Aug. 22, on "Pipedreams," American Public Radio's syndicated weekly program of organ music.
A performance by organist Dr. Huw Lewis of the Hope College music faculty will be featured beginning the week of Monday, Aug. 22, on "Pipedreams," American Public Radio's syndicated weekly program of organ music.
The broadcast will be of Lewis's premiere performance in May 2000 of "Invocation and Dance," a composition for organ and orchestra by Alfred V. Fedak. The concert, which took place at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Albany, N.Y., featured Lewis and the Franciscan Chamber Orchestra directed by the Brazilian conductor Lanfranco Marcelletti, and was part of the Siena College Music Series.
"Invocation and Dance," a 10-minute work, was commissioned by Siena College. It will be the final work of seven on the two-hour "Pipedreams" broadcast, which is titled "In Concert."
"Pipedreams" can be heard online at www.pipedreams.org. The website also includes additional information about the program, including listings for stations around the country that carry "Pipedreams."
"Pipedreams," which began in 1982, is the only nationally distributed weekly radio program exploring the art of the pipe organ, and is hosted by Michael Barone. The program visited Hope three years ago, recording a segment featuring Lewis and students performing the college's recently restored E.M. Skinner pipe organ in Dimnent Memorial Chapel in September 2008.
A professor of music, Lewis has taught at Hope since 1990. Born in Wales, he performs nationally and internationally on a regular basis, and has been featured at important meetings and conventions sponsored by many professional organizations including the American Guild of Organists and the Royal College of Organists.
He was a featured recitalist at the 1987 International Congress of Organists. Dr. Lewis's playing has been broadcast in America and in Great Britain where he has made numerous recordings for the BBC. He has served on many competition juries, most recently for the 2003 Dallas International Organ Competition.
While a student, Dr. Lewis received numerous prestigious scholarships, fellowships, and prizes. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London, at Cambridge University, and at the University of Michigan.
Fedak is a 1975 Hope graduate who is minister of music and arts at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Capitol Hill in Albany, N.Y., and a widely published and well-known composer of church music.
He has more than 200 choral and organ works in print, and his hymn tunes appear in hymnals and collections in the U.S., Canada, England, Scotland, New Zealand, China and Japan. Three anthologies of his hymns have been published by the Selah Publishing Company: "The Alfred V. Fedak Hymnary" (1990), "Sing to the Lord No Threadbare Song" (2001) and "God of the Future" (2009).
He has earned many awards in organ performance and composition, including the American Guild of Organists' prestigious S. Lewis Elmer Award, as well as grants and prizes from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Hymn Society and the John Ness Beck Foundation.