Baylor Grad Performs Closing Event Of Organ Conference

by Richard Veit

Andrew Risinger, a Baylor University graduate who now serves as organist at West End United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tenn., and teaches on the music faculty of Belmont University, will present the closing event of the 11th annual Midwinter Organ Conference. His guest recital will take place at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 15, beginning in Jones Concert Hall in the Glennis McCrary Music Building.
The program will open with Improvisation on "Victimae paschali" by Charles Tournemire, as transcribed by Maurice Duruflé, followed by two works by Johann Sebastian Bach -- his Prelude and Fugue in G major, BWV 541, and his chorale Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659.
The recital also will include a performance of Jirí Ropek's Variations on "Victimae paschali," the "Allegro deciso" movement from Marcel Dupré's Evocation--Poème symphonique, Op. 37, and Louis Vierne's Naïades.
The program will close with Jeanne Demessieux's Chorale Prelude on "Rorate caeli" and Maurice Duruflé's Prelude and Fugue on the Name of Alain.
Risinger earned a bachelor of music degree at Baylor in 1988 as a student of Joyce Jones. He also holds a double master of music degree in organ performance and choral conducting from the University of Alabama. Risinger was awarded second prize in the 1994 American Guild of Organists' National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance, and he is a past winner of the William C. Hall Organ Competition in San Antonio. As a recitalist, he has performed throughout the United States and also has appeared as organ soloist with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and the Illinois Symphony Orchestra.
The recital is free and open to the public. For more information, call the Baylor School of Music at (254) 710-3991.