The 2021 Old West Organ Society Summer Series continues with a performance by Carolyn Craig. Admission is free; donations are gratefully accepted in support of the Society.
Carolyn Craig
Carolyn Craig, of Knoxville, Tennessee, graduated summa cum laude from Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music with a Master of Music in Organ in 2021, and is pursuing a Master of Musical Arts at Yale in 2021-2022. At Yale, she has studied organ with Jon Laukvik and Martin Jean, improvisation with Jeffrey Brillhart, and conducting with Marguerite Brooks and David Hill. Carolyn held the two-year post of Organ Scholar at Trinity on the Green under Walden Moore. She is excited to become the Organ Scholar at Christ Church and the Director of Music at The Episcopal Church at Yale for 2021-2022. Awards from her time at Yale include the Mary Baker Award in Organ Accompaniment for her work with Yale’s Schola Cantorum, and the Audience Prize in the 2020 Arthur Poister Scholarship Competition in Organ Playing, held online with no judges’ prizes due to Covid-19. Prior to attending Yale, Carolyn spent a formative gap year as the 2018-2019 Organ Scholar at Truro Cathedral. This experience followed an undergraduate degree at Indiana University, where she held the university’s most prestigious academic scholarship, the Wells Scholarship. Carolyn graduated from IU summa cum laude with a BM in Organ Performance, in the studio of Chris Young, and minors in Conducting and German. Carolyn was the Undergraduate Organ Scholar at Trinity Episcopal Church with Marilyn Keiser. During her undergraduate degree, she studied in Graz, Austria for a summer and in Vienna for a semester. Carolyn is excited to return to Boston. She was honored to be a Rising Star in recital at the Boston National Convention of the American Guild of Organists in 2014, and she thoroughly enjoyed performing at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall in 2020. Carolyn has also given solo recitals at St. Paul’s, Truro, Winchester, and Wells cathedrals in the UK; for Lund, Västerås and Kalmar Cathedrals’ “World-leading organists from all corners of the earth” virtual series; in many other venues in the US and Europe; and on the radio program Pipedreams. A winner of a number of competitions, Carolyn will head to Russia in September as a semifinalist in the Tariverdiev International Organ Competition. During the pandemic, Carolyn co-founded Amplify Female Composers with Janet Yieh, and became a contributor to the inclusive liturgical music planning resource, A Great Host of Composers. For more information, visit amplifyfemalecomposers.org and greathostcomposers.org