UA News

The School of Music's Roy A. Johnson Memorial Organ Series welcomes internationally acclaimed guest artist organist Gail Archer.

Archer will present a concert featuring the works of 19th century composers Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Max Reger.

Archer is college organist at Vassar College and a member of the organ and history faculty at the Manhattan School of Music. She serves as director of the music program at Barnard College, Columbia University and conducts the university choirs. Archer is artistic director of the artist and student organ series at historic Central Synagogue in New York City. Her first CD, "The Orpheus of Amsterdam," on CALA Records, London, received international critical praise; her second CD, "A Mystic in the Making, Music of Olivier Messiaen," recorded on the Aeolian-Skinner organ at St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University, was released in April 2007 on Meyer-Media. Archer played the complete Messiaen organ works in six Manhattan churches in spring 2008. The New York Times declared, "a survey of Messiaen's organ music by Gail Archer is sure to be among the year's highlights – Ms. Archer's well-paced interpretation had a compelling authority. She played with a bracing physicality in the work's more driven passages and endowed humbler ruminations with a sense of vulnerability and awe." Time-Out New York named the Messiaen cycle "Best of 2008" in classical music and opera.

In spring 2009, Archer celebrated the 200th birthday of Felix Mendelssohn with a recital series at Central Synagogue and Temple-Emanu-El in New York City. Ms. Archer's new CD, "An American Idyll," featuring American organ music from 1900 to the present, played on the E. M. Skinner organ at Rollins College, Winter Park, Fla., was released in August 2008 on Meyer-Media.