St. John's Episcopal Church

Our director for 2024 will be Richard Webster, a choral conductor, composer, church musician and organist of wide renown who served before as our director in 2010.  He is Interim Director of Music at St. Paul’s Choir School and Catholic Church, Harvard Square, Cambridge, having retired in 2022 as Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston. As a composer and arranger he completes several commissioned works a year. His hymn arrangements for brass, percussion, organ and congregation are heard across the world, including the CBC's Christmas and Easter broadcasts, BBC's "Songs of Praise,” at a hymn festival in Sweden’s Lund Cathedral, in an Australian celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and on a recording of hymns from Taiwan.

At Trinity, Boston, where he cofounded the Trinity Choristers, he led the choirs on five tours of England, with residencies at York Minster; Westminster Abbey; Durham, Ely, Lincoln, Chichester, Salisbury, Wells, Winchester and St. Paul’s Cathedrals. During his tenure, Trinity's 1926 Skinner nave organ was successfully renovated and a new 4-manual Skinner replica console added.

Richard is Music Director of Chicago's Bach Week Festival, featuring some of the nation's most acclaimed musicians. Sought after as a choral clinician, he has led choir courses and workshops across the U.S., South Africa and New Zealand. He is an honorary Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music (FRSCM), and holds the Doctor of Music degree, honoris causa, from the University of the South at Sewanee. He is a guest lecturer at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale. In 2023 he received the American Guild of Organist’s Distinguished Artist Award. 

Richard has performed and recorded as organist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in works from the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony to Ives’ Fourth Symphony. He is the Organist and Choirmaster Emeritus of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Evanston, Illinois, where, from 1974 to 2003 he directed the Choir of Men and Boys, the Girls Choir, Schola and the St. Luke’s Singers in a program widely respected and emulated. The restoration of the celebrated 1922 Ernest M. Skinner organ, Opus 327 at St. Luke’s was accomplished under his leadership.

A native of Nashville, Mr. Webster studied organ with the late Peter Fyfe, Karel Paukert and Wolfgang Rübsam. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Great Britain, as Organ Scholar at Chichester Cathedral under the late John Birch.

Webster's works are published by Augsburg Fortress, Church Music Society, Church Publishing, Selah and Advent Press. His articles on church music have appeared in The American Organist, The Diapason, Chicago Tribune, The Living Church, Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, the Choral Journal of the ACDA and the Windy City Times. He was a contributing author to Leading the Church’s Song, published by Augsburg.

A passionate runner, Richard has completed 46 marathons, including 21 Boston Marathons.

The 2024 course organist will be Jerrick Cavagnaro, a recent graduate of the Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, where he earned a master’s degree in organ performance, studying under Jon Laukvik and Thomas Murray.  He completed his undergraduate studies at Westminster Choir College where he earned bachelor’s degrees in sacred music and organ performance, studying under Alan Morrison.  A native of New Jersey, Jerrick has served as director of music at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Montville and Lincoln Park, New Jersey, organ scholar at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Morristown, New Jersey, and as organ scholar at Trinity Episcopal Church on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut.  He most recently served as the assistant director of music and organist at Christ Episcopal Church, Charlotte, North Carolina.  In 2022, Jerrick received the second prize in the National Competition in Organ Accompaniment sponsored by the Washington, DC chapter of the American Guild of Organists, third prize in the Quebec Organ Competition in Quebec City, Canada and was a semifinalist in the 2022 Boston Bach International Organ Competition.  Also an active composer, Jerrick’s compositions have recently been published by Oxford University Press.

In 2024 he will serve as primary organist, accompanying services and rehearsals and teaching our two organ scholars during the RSCM Charlotte Summer Choral Residency.

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The beautiful campus of Queens University of Charlotte provides excellent facilities including a gymnasium, tennis courts, swimming pool, dormitories, and a dining hall.  Rehearsal and worship space will be provided across the street at Myers Park Baptist Church, where the course will have daily services of evening worship.

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Public services will include the 10:15 a.m. Sunday Eucharist at St. John's Episcopal Church and the closing 4:00 p.m. Evensong at Myers Park Baptist Church on Sunday, July 21.  The service at St. John's is available live on-line and later on St. John's Youtube and Facebook channels. 

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