Jillian Gardner plays "Jupiter" from The Planets

Stephen Black

Stephen Black died June 25. He was born August 30, 1967, in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended the University of Louisville and received a Master of Musical Arts degree in conducting and organ from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music/Yale School of Music, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1999. At Yale, he directed the Battell Chapel Choir and was the recipient of the Richard French Prize in Choral Conducting. Black went on to earn a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California.

Playing slowly

I ended last month’s column with an anecdote that I suggested would lead nicely into what I wanted to write about this month:

Three finalists will be selected to compete April 4 on the Roosevelt/Schantz organ at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Syracuse, New York.

October 1–5 in Toulouse, France