Music Ministry

MUSIC MINISTRY AT GRACE CHURCH

The Music Ministry at Grace Church is an essential element of our worship  and enriches a wide range of activities in our parish community.

Our Music Director is Noah Horn.  Noah has had over twenty years of experience as a church choir director.  He is also a collegiate educator with a doctoral degree from Yale University.  Noah has taught locally at Amherst, Hampshire, and Williams Colleges, as well as Yale, Oberlin, Wesleyan, University of Michigan, Wayne State, and Western Michigan. He has also conducted the primary mixed choir at Harvard University, the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum.

Our organist is Richard “Dick” Damon.  Dick plays our 1977 tracker organ and the piano during services. Dick started studying the piano at age seven and the organ shortly after.  He graduated with a degree in music from Stanford University where he studied under renowned organist, Hebert Boswell Nanney, and concert pianist, Alfred Baller.  Dick held several organ and choir directing jobs in the San Francisco Bay area and has been our organist since 1999.  Besides his talents at the keyboard, Dick is an in-demand piano technician.  He honed his tuning skills in Boston and is a member of the Piano Technicians Guild.

Everyone is welcome to join our choir which includes beginners and professional-level volunteers. Each week the choir sings anthems from a wide range of traditional sources, with the goal of preserving the rich heritage of church music.

We are fortunate to live in the Five College area and many of the region’s music professors are parishioners at Grace Church. They supplement the musical life of our church by playing preludes and postludes, participating in special music projects, and leading adult education sessions on musical topics. We maintain a list of parish instrumentalists — children, teenagers, and adults — and facilitate the putting together of a variety of parish chamber ensembles. Grace has a five-octave set of Whitechapel handbells, which are used on special occasions.

Choir Fun

Musical Meditation from Grace Church Virtual Choir: “Lord, For Thy Tender Mercy’s Sake”