06/09/2026
Event Recap - Gregoriana Members Recital
On May 8, 2026, members and friends of the Twin Cities chapter of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) presented a concert performance of Gregoriana, a recently published collection (Stainer & Bell) edited by Anna Lapwood. This volume features twelve Gregorian chant-based works by contemporary women composers, suitable for liturgical and/or concert performance. Composers represented in the collection are Melissa Dunphy, Zanadia Stewart Robles, Kristina Arakelyan, Grace-Evangeline Mason, Sarah MacDonald, Julia Ainscough, Rhian Samuel, Cecilia McDowall, Amy Summers, Kerensa Briggs, and Dobrinka Tabakova. Their expressive works varied from the atmospheric to the intense, though all were of an approachable technical difficulty and should prove very ‘useable’ for the skilled church musician.
The organ solos…played by Kristina Rizzotto, Diane Meredith Belcher, and Melanie Ohnstad…were preceded by the appropriate chant theme sung by a small women’s schola from the University of St. Thomas Liturgical Choir, led by Elena Bird Zolnik.
The concert took place in the resplendent acoustics of the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Minnesota’s capitol city, drawing upon the resources of the Cathedral’s 1925 Skinner (III/30) and 1963 Aeolian-Skinner (III/35), expanded in 2013 by Quimby (IV/86), which served the music perfectly.
— Michael Barone, TCAGO Program Chair
