Lenten series of organ concerts gets underway March 1

WATERVILLE — The First Baptist Church’s 29th year of presenting Lenten concerts featuring performances by area guest organists will get underway March 1 at the church, 1 Park St.
Joshua Bickford, minister of music at First Baptist Church, has announced the organists for the 2020 Lenten season:
March 1 — Christina Misner Rao, daughter of the Rev. Peter and Susan Misner, studied piano and organ with Vira Tibbetts of Hallowell and Margaret Godfrey of Winthrop. She holds a masters degree in business administration from Boston University and a teaching certificate from Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Conn. She is currently the accompanist for Kennebec Performing Arts Company, Leavitt High School chorus, Monmouth Middle School chorus, and the organist/choir director at Wayne Community Church.
March 8 — Anna Beth Rynders, a Maine native who studied piano with Thomas French and organ with John Fay, municipal organist in Portland, received a bachelor of music degree from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, N.J., where she studied organ with George Markey and minored in voice. She is currently keyboardist at the Universalist-Unitarian Church in Waterville.
March 15 — “Budge” (Howard A.) Whalen attended Bates College in Lewiston then Northeastern for a master’s degree, all while teaching and serving as a school administrator. He later went to University of Maine for post graduate studies. Whalen began piano lessons at age 7, and organ lessons at 13; he has always had a passion for playing the organ. “It’s fun making music with the king of instruments,” he says. “There is pleasure in the sounds of beautiful music coming through a fine instrument of hundreds of pipes and having the sounds of heaven right among us.”
March 22 — Sharon Saunders, organist at Waterville’s United Methodist Church, has held that position since 1993. A native of Pittsburgh, she studied organ as an undergraduate at Carnegie-Mellon University and completed graduate degrees in musicology and library science at the University of Pittsburgh. Saunders is the associate college librarian for Systems and Bibliographic Services at Bates College.
March 29 — Ed Larson received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Boston University’s School of Fine and Applied Arts, where he studied organ with Max Miller (Marsh Chapel) and George Faxon (Trinity Church) choral conducting with James Cunningham (Tanglewood) and Allen C. Lannom (assistant to Robert Shaw, Julliard School). As organist/pianist, Larson has served various churches in Massachusetts and Maine and is currently organist at Penny Memorial Baptist Church in Augusta. He has also been the accompanist for the Coda Chorus, Kennebec Performing Arts Company Chorus, The Capital Chorale, and numerous school music festivals. Larson is a published composer (USA and Sweden) and his choral works have been performed nationally and internationally.
April 5 — Jay Zoller of Newcastle, is the director of music and organist at South Parish Congregational Church in Augusta, where he plays the church’s historic 1866 E & GG Hook organ. Zoller recently retired from the Andover Organ Company, where he built and designed pipe organs. He has played concerts in Germany, which included recitals in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne. Recently he played programs in Wyoming and Nebraska in addition to New England.
All of the Lenten concert programs are held at 2 p.m. and are open to the public.