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Organ concert features Pamela Decker Feb. 21

Daniel Memorial Chapel

Last updated February 13, 2017

By Tina Underwood

The Furman University Department of Music will present a concert featuring celebrated organist Pamela Decker Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 8 p.m. in Daniel Memorial Chapel on campus.

University of Arizona in Tucson music professor Pamela Decker

The recital is open to the public and is presented by the Furman Hartness Organ Series and the 2016-2017 Sound Quality Concert Series. Tickets, available in advance or at the door, are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and $5 for students.

Decker’s program, performed on Furman’s Hartness Organ (C.B. Fisk Opus 121, three manuals, 42 stops) features her own compositions and music by Myron Roberts, Felix Mendelssohn, Noel Rawsthorne, Leo Sowerby, and Marcel Dupré.

Decker is professor of organ/music theory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and organist at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Tucson.

As both recitalist and composer, Decker has been active in the United States, Europe, the Baltic Region, and Canada. She has performed as featured recitalist at many conventions and festivals, among them, the American Guild of Organists (AGO) National Convention, two AGO regional conventions, and the Festival International d’Orgue de Monaco.

Her compositions have been recorded on multiple labels and performed in at least 19 countries. Leading artists such as Douglas Cleveland (Gothic: Celestial Fire), Janice Beck (Albany 383:  Janice Beck Performs Works of Pamela Decker), and Christa Rakich (ReZound:  Christa Rakich in Recital at St. Mark’s Cathedral) have recorded major works by Decker on projects that have won critical acclaim.

For Decker’s Flights of Fancy (Albany) Fanfare recently dubbed her “one of America’s most intrepid virtuoso organists.” About Decker Plays Decker: Desert Wildflowers (Loft Recordings), Gramophone referred to the artist as “an organist noble in the Bach line…as a composer-performer she falls clearly into the lineage from which Bach and Duruflé are but two points on a long and distinguished timeline.”

Her concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra Elegy and Dances (C.F. Peters) was premiered at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory by saxophonist Frederick Hemke and organist Douglas Cleveland.

Decker holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree (performance/composition) from Stanford University, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Lübeck, Germany.

More information about Pamela Decker may be found at http://www.pamela-decker.com/. Or contact the Furman University Department of Music at (864) 294-2086, or email the department at FurmanMusic@furman.edu. Tickets may be ordered by calling the same number.

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