Advent organ recital planned at Wick Chapel

The Annual Advent and Christmas Organ Recital at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford will take place this year at noon Dec. 8 in the Harriett B. Wick Chapel.

Mitchell Stecker, director of music and liturgy at Mount Lebanon United Methodist Church in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, will play the Sarah B. Dorn Organ. The event is free and open to the public.

Stecker holds a Bachelor of Music, Bachelor of Arts in linguistics and a Master of Music in historical musicology with a concentration in sacred music, all from the University of Florida.

Currently, he serves as the chapel musician at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and has assumed the duties of artistic director of the Washington (Pa.) Festival Chorale.

Stecker has formerly held positions as organist and choirmaster of St. Mark’s Church in Palatka, Fla., as carillon fellow at Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Fla, and as director of chapel music at the Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

He is an active composer, and his works have been premiered throughout the United States and Europe. In 2019, he published a collection from the shape-note singing tradition called “The Psalmist’s Harp.”

When not at the keyboard, Stecker enjoys shape-note singing, collecting American reed organs, 3D printing and working with his wife, Sarah, on home projects in their 100-year-old house.

This is the 12th year the university has hosted the recital. The Sarah B. Dorn Organ was built by Schantz Organ Co. in Orrville, Ohio, in 2010. The organ has 1,020 pipes that were voiced and tuned on site in the chapel.

Dorn was a philanthropist who supported Pitt-Bradford and former co-owner of Zippo Manufacturing Co. and W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co.

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