The Wabash College Music Department invites the public to the 14th annual Roger H. Ide Organ Recital at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, February 6, in Pioneer Chapel. Organist, Isabelle Demers, will play this year’s recital.
A native of Québec, Isabelle Demers is rapidly becoming recognized as one of North America’s most virtuosic organists. She began piano study at age six and at age 11 began piano and organ study at the Montreal Conservatory of Music. She has been hailed as a “musician’s musician,” a “diminutive dynamo” with vehement virtuosity. Critics and audiences have praised her special feel for registration and her idiosyncratic exploitation of the organ’s resources. Her programs, performed entirely from memory, have received rave reviews in leading organ magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.
Recent engagements include the cathedrals of Cologne and Regensburg in Germany, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, as well as major universities and concert halls in the United States, among them Davies Hall (San Francisco), Disney Hall (Los Angeles), the Kimmel Center (Philadelphia), Yale University, and the Eastman School of Music. She has also been a featured performer at national conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Royal Canadian College of Organists.
Dr. Demers holds the BM in piano and organ from Le Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal, as well as the MM and DMA from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Paul Jacobs. Her doctoral work on Bach’s St. John’s Passion received the Richard French Prize for best dissertation.
She is Assistant Professor of Organ at Baylor University in Texas.
The annual Roger H. Ide Organ Recital is funded by a bequest from Dr. Roger Ide, Wabash Class of 1959, who served as the Wabash College organist while he was a student. The memory of that experience was such a pleasant one for Dr. Ide that he chose to perpetuate the music with a gift that makes it possible to enjoy organ recitals for years to come.
The concert is free and open to the public. A reception will be held immediately following the concert in the Rogge Lounge in Baxter Hall.