Hope Church organist, Rhonda Sider Edgington, will offer an Advent Organ Recital on Sunday, December 8 at 4pm in the Hope Church Sanctuary. The program will be based on Advent and Christmas tunes and texts, with congregational singing of the hymns interspersed with pieces based on those themes.
The concert will also feature two guest musicians. Stephen Jenkins, Director of Music and Organist at Grace Episcopal Church in Holland, will perform an organ duo with Rhonda. Greg Bassett, French Hornist with the West Michigan Symphony, will join Rhonda on two pieces for organ and horn.
Pieces to be performed in the concert will range from a German Baroque choral prelude by J. S. Bach, a French Classic Noel by Louis Claude Daquin, the organ duo by the Lebanese-French organist and composer Naji Hakim, who was organist for many years at the famous La Trinitie, in Paris. There will also be two American composers represented, Randall Faust – Professor of Music at Western Illinois University, and for two decades a teacher at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Northern Michigan; and Daniel Pinkham – who taught for over 40 years at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and was also organist at King’s Chapel in Boston.
A video camera will allow audience members an up close view of the organists as they play. The program will be finished in time for audience members to attend the Nativity Pageant starting at 5pm.