Organ Recital: John T. Lowe Jr. (Gainesville, Florida)

Nicolaus Bruhns (1665-1934)
Præludium in G Major

Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
Psalm Prelude in D Minor (Set 2, No. 1)

Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937)
Symphonie gothique, Op. 70
      Andante sostenuto

Henri Mulet (1878-1967)
Byzantine Sketches
     X. Tu es petra et portæ inferi non prævalebunt advertus te (“Thou art the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.”—Matthew 16:18)


John T. Lowe, Jr. is a native of Lynchburg, Virginia. He received the double Master of Music degree in Organ Performance and Choral Conducting from the University of Alabama in 1996, and the Doctor of Music degree in Organ Performance and Church Music from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2005. His teachers include David Charles Campbell, George B. Clark, the late J. Warren Hutton, Larry Smith, and Christopher Young in organ, and Sandra Willetts in conducting. In September 2007, he assumed the duties of Director of Music and Organist at Gainesville, Florida’s Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, where he oversees the music program for the 1,125-member congregation, and plays the 3-manual, 49-rank Visser-Rowland organ in liturgies and concerts. He is the Music Director of the 130-voice Village Voices Chorus (The Villages, Florida), and the Dean of the Gainesville Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, for whom he served as Director of the chapter’s first Pipe Organ Encounter (POE) for young organists in summer 2012.

Dr. Lowe has been a prizewinner in local, regional, and national competitions. In 1991 he was first place winner of the American Guild of Organists’ Regional Competition for Young Organists in Annapolis, Maryland, and in 1996 the second place winner of the San Marino, California, Organ Competition. In 1998 and 1999, he was one of twenty-five young artists invited to compete in both the opening rounds of the Calgary International Organ Competition and the American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance, respectively. He has performed recitals in Alabama, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia, and his accompanying engagements have taken him to the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, and Australia.