Thomas Murray, Martin Jean, Jeffrey Brillhart (improvisation)
The major in organ prepares students for careers as soloists, informed teachers, and church musicians, and for doctoral-level studies. The departmental seminar is devoted to a comprehensive survey of organ literature from all musical periods. In addition to individual coaching from the resident faculty, majors receive individual lessons from renowned visiting artists who come to Yale for one week each year. In recent years the visiting artists have included Daniel Roth, Marie-Claire Alain, Martin Haselböck, Peter Planyavsky, and Dame Gillian Weir.
Students have the opportunity for practice and performance on an extensive collection of fine instruments at the University: the H. Frank Bozyan Memorial Organ in Dwight Memorial Chapel (von Beckerath, three manuals, 1971); the organ in Battell Chapel (Walter Holtkamp Sr., three manuals, 1951); Marquand Chapel at the Divinity School (E. M. Skinner, three manuals, 1931); and the Newberry Memorial Organ in Woolsey Hall (E. M. Skinner, four manuals, 1928), one of the most renowned Romantic organs in the world. Two-manual practice instruments by Flentrop, Holtkamp, Casavant, and other builders are located both in Woolsey Hall and at the Institute of Sacred Music, which also houses five Steinway grand pianos, a C. B. Fisk positive, and a Dowd harpsichord.
Organ majors may enroll in the School of Music through the Insitute of Sacred Music for all degree programs—M.M., M.M.A., D.M.A., and Artist Diploma. The Institute also offers an employment placement service for organ students at Yale.
Jeffrey Brillhart, has performed throughout the United States and Europe as organist and conductor and is known for his extraordinary musical versatility. He was awarded first place at the American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Improvisation in 1994. Mr. Brillhart is Director of Music and Fine Arts at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, where he oversees music, education and arts programs that involve more than 500 children, youth, and adults each week. He is also Music Director of Philadelphia’s acclaimed Singing City Choir, one of the first integrated community choirs in the U.S. Under his director, Singing City has performed with The Philadelphia Orchestra, with jazz great Dave Brubeck, and on tours to Cuba and most recently, Northern Ireland. Mr. Brillhart maintains an active schedule as conductor, organist, and clinician, most recently at the Eastman School of Music, Westminster Choir College, The Curtis Institute of Music, and Baylor University. He received his Mater of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music.
Martin Jean, organ, is the director of the Institute of Sacred Music. He is widely recognized as a brilliant, warmly communicative artist, with broadly based repertorial interests. Among his many awards and honors are first place at the international Grand Prix de Chartres in 1986 and first prize in 1992 at the National Young Artists's Competition in Organ Performance, held by the American Guild of Organists. A former student of Robert Glasgow, he holds the DMA from the University of Michigan, and was an associate professor and University Organist at Valparaiso University before coming to Yale.
Thomas Murray, organ, has served on the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and School of Music faculties since 1981. He is especially well known for his interpretations of the romantic repertoire, and his recordings of Mendelssohn, Elgar, Franck, and Saint-Saëns have received high acclaim. At the age of twenty-two he was a first-place winner of the American Guild of Organists national competition (1966). In 1986 he was named International Performer of the year by the New York City chapter of the AGO. In receiving this honor he followed some of the most illustrious organists of the twentieth century, including Marie-Claire Alain, Jean Guillou, and Dame Gilliam Weir. He was a recitalist at the International Congress of Organists in Cambridge in 1987 and at the Lahti Organ Festival in Finland in 1997, and has performed in South America, Australia, and Japan as well as throughout Western Europe. He has performed as soloist with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, the National Chamber Orchestra in Washington, D.C., the Pittsburgh and Milwaukee symphonies, and the Yale Symphony and Yale Philharmonia. Prior to joining the Yale faculty, Professor Murray was organist and choirmaster of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Boston, where he trained a choir of men and boys in the English tradition. In earlier years at Yale he conducted the University Chapel Choir.