Nunc dimittis: Donald Hugh Olson

Franklin Ashdown

Franklin Ashdown, physician, organist, and composer, died January 30 in El Paso, Texas. Born May 2, 1942, in Logan, Utah, he started playing the piano at an early age and was called to be the organist for his ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 13. After his family moved to Lubbock, Texas, he began organ studies with Judson Maynard. He completed his undergraduate work at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he sang in the concert choir. Pursuing his passion for medicine, he attended Southwestern Medical School of the University of Texas in Dallas. He was in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was shot and brought into the emergency room, where Ashdown was recruited to be a liaison between reporters and doctors.

Ashdown spent his medical residency in Salt Lake City, and he spoke later of the great influence Tabernacle Organist Alexander Schreiner had on him. He felt that the signature sound of the Tabernacle organ and the sonorities Schreiner was able to exploit in his improvisations greatly affected his writing. Ashdown also studied organ in Utah with James Drake, who encouraged him to begin composing.  

This was also the time of the Vietnam War, and Ashdown was able to defer being drafted until he completed his medical training. In order to fulfill his military obligations, he was assigned as a doctor to Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 1971. He started his own medical practice as an internist in 1973, serving as physician in Alamogordo until his retirement in 2008.

For many years Ashdown was organist and choir director at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alamogordo. Even during his busy medical years, he was composing. Upon his retirement, he was able to focus his full-time attention on composing organ and choral works. His organ works include many hymn and folk tune arrangements and also numerous original concert works. Over his career he had published more than 250 pieces for solo organ, at least 30 collections of organ music, 15 works for organ with other instruments, and 50 choral works with Augsburg Fortress, Concordia Publishing House, Gentry Publications, GIA Publications, H. W. Gray, Wayne Leupold Editions, Lorenz, MorningStar Music Publishers, Neil Kjos Co., Oregon Catholic Press, The Organist’s Companion, Oxford University Press, Paraclete Press, Sacred Music Press, and Zimbel Press.  

His works were performed in venues such as Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; The Tabernacle at Temple Square, Salt Lake City; St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; and Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. They have also been featured on American Public Radio’s Pipedreams, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and the Tabernacle Choir’s weekly broadcast Music and the Spoken Word.

Franklin Ashdown is survived by six siblings as well as 27 nieces and nephews and 101 great-nieces and nephews. Services were held February 4 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Alamogordo.

Margo Halsted

Margo Halsted died February 22. Born Margo Armbruster on April 24, 1938, in Bakersfield, California, she was first introduced to the carillon as an undergraduate student at Stanford University. From Stanford she earned a bachelor’s degree in music (1960) and a master’s degree in education (1965). In 1975 she earned a Master of Music degree from the University of California Riverside. Halsted passed the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA) carillonneur examination at the 1967 congress in Ottawa, Canada, and earned a diploma from the Netherlands Carillon School, Amersfoort, in 1981. She was active within the GCNA over many years, serving as assistant secretary, a member of the board of directors, chair of several committees, and editor of the guild’s newsletter. Halsted was awarded honorary membership in the GCNA and twice received the GCNA’s Certificate for Exceptional Service. She was also awarded the University of California Berkeley Medal, Bell and Citation Awards from the World Carillon Federation, and was an honorary member of the Belgian Carillon School, Mechelen.

Over the course of her career, Halsted served as associate carillonneur for Stanford University, 1967–1977; lecturer, university organist, and carillonist for University of California Riverside, 1977–1987; assistant professor and later associate professor at the University of Michigan, 1987–2003; with additional service at Michigan State University and University of California Santa Barbara, teaching more than 200 students to play the carillon. At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she taught and performed on the university’s two carillons in the only master’s degree program for carillon in the United States. She was named Associate Professor Emerita in 2003.

Halsted concertized around the world, consulted for carillon projects in the United States and abroad, and lectured/presented at five World Carillon Federation conventions. She composed music for the carillon and published numerous articles about the instrument and served as contributing editor for the carillon for The Diapason from 1981 until 1991.

Margo Halsted was preceded in death by two weeks by her husband Peter LeSourd. Memorial gifts for may be made to the Armbruster Fund, an endowment that she started to benefit the University of Michigan’s carillon program (https://donate.umich.edu/XVjKB).

Jan Reagan Rowland

Jan Reagan Rowland died January 18 in Houston, Texas. He was born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1944, attended local schools there, and enrolled at Lamar University in Beaumont, where he studied electrical engineering and enrolled in German language classes. He completed two years of study before being called into the United States Army and serving from 1966 to 1968, where his expertise in speaking German earned him an assignment in Munich, Germany. It was there that he met his future wife, Hanne, and they were married in Berlin in 1969.

As his tour of duty in the army was nearing its end, the United States representative for E. F. Walcker & Cie. of Ludwigsburg, Germany, suggested that Rowland take a job at Walcker so that he could become more useful as a skilled organ installer once he returned to the United States. Rowland worked at Walcker for 35 days in July and August of 1968, then returned to the United States, where two Walcker jobs awaited installation: one in Michigan, the other at Colby College, Waterville, Maine. While in Waterville, Rowland learned of another installation happening at the First Congregational Church in the same town and made a visit to the church, where he met David W. Cogswell, the owner/president of Berkshire Organ Company. Cogswell telephoned Rowland early in 1969 with an offer of a job as factory manager of Berkshire, which Rowland accepted, and within a couple of months he was named executive vice president.

Discussions between Rowland, Cogswell, and others about the costs of travel to Europe to meet with organbuilders germinated the idea of an organization of organ building individuals, not companies, and resulted in a convention with no title in Washington, D.C. That gathering in 1973 became the founding of the American Institute of Organbuilders. As an attendee of that convention, Rowland was considered a co-founder of the organization and was designated a charter member.

Later in 1973, concerned about the slow growth of the Berkshire Organ Company, Rowland decided to form his own company with Pieter Visser, who was hired by Berkshire only four months earlier. Houston, Texas, was chosen as the site for the new company, Visser-Rowland Associates.

The company grew as Houston expanded in the 1970s and 1980s, with oil companies creating more jobs and with more churches being built. For the next eleven years, Visser-Rowland built dozens of pipe organs for sites from Maine to California. One of the last instruments before Rowland’s retirement from the firm was built for Bates Recital Hall at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time, it was the largest mechanical-action organ pipe organ built by a United States firm, having 67 stops.

Rowland was accepted into membership of the International Society of Organ Builders in 1984, and he became a member of the editorial board of the society’s information trade journal, for which he wrote articles on various organbuilding techniques. He often translated articles and speeches of other organbuilders from German into English. He was invited to Europe over two dozen times to the annual International Society of Organbuilders congresses due to his expertise.

In 1984 Rowland started his own shop producing custom drawknobs for many organbuilders in America, Europe, and Japan. However, his real enjoyment came from designing and building special tools and machines for different organbuilders, tools and machines that could not be bought elsewhere.

Rowland was perhaps best known for his intelligence and ability to imagine, invent, and make things work better and more efficiently. He was internationally respected for his designing of a computerized lathe for completing tasks such as shaping drawknobs for pipe organs. This enabled pipe organ builders to cut costs enormously by reducing labor and time, making tens of thousands of hours of tedium and templates obsolete through his inventions. Rowland constructed some of these computerized systems for pipe organ companies in Europe, filling the cargo hold on a plane to ship the devices overseas.

Rowland enjoyed attending the American Institute of Organbuilders convention every year with his wife, Hanne. He was proud that the AIO stayed in business and attracted and taught organbuilders to help each other and keep organbuilding an interesting and unusual business.

Jan Reagan Rowland is survived by Hanne, his wife of 54 years, of Houston, and a sister Karen Rowland Richardson and her husband Ronnie of Beaumont, Texas. A military burial with full honors was held at the Houston National Cemetery on January 30.

—Hanne Rowland

Karen Rowland Richardson

Christopher Lavoie

Richard French Davidson

Richard French Davidson, 80, died July 13 in Brick, New Jersey. Born June 18, 1942, and raised in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, he was active in the liturgical music of the Episcopal Church from an early age, serving as a chorister at his home parish of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Montclair, New Jersey, as well as seasonally at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City under the direction of Norman Coke-Jephcott.

Davidson graduated from Wagner College, Staten Island, New York, in 1964, earning a degree in clinical psychology while pursuing parallel studies in computer programming. He maintained a full-time career in data management with Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Continuing his involvement with the musical and liturgical life of the Episcopal Church, Davidson began in the late 1970s to be retained by churches and other institutions as a consultant on organ design and installations, both pipe and electronic, the latter being an area where he applied his postgraduate study and knowledge of psychoacoustics (the relationship between sound and its reception/interpretation by the human ear and mind) to the custom design of loudspeakers for organ installations. He expanded this business beyond the organ trade to the commercial design of loudspeakers for home stereo equipment in the high-end audiophile market, earning several awards and citations by trade groups and audiophile societies.

After leaving Chase, he assembled his various business pursuits under the umbrella of his own company, establishing Innovative Techniques Corporation (ITC) in Herbertsville, New Jersey, in 1980. In that decade, with his work as a consultant increasingly focused on pipe organ projects, he began studying pipe organ tuning and maintenance with organ builder Donald Davett in Hartford, Connecticut, pipe voicing with Gilbert Adams and Hans Schmidt, and tonal finishing with Ronald Thayer.

Having developed a regular pipe organ tuning and maintenance clientele in central New Jersey, Davidson began to design and build new pipe organs under the ITC nameplate after relocating the firm to Jackson, New Jersey, in 1992, where he expanded his facilities to include a complete organ shop, entering into partnership with Edward Hillis, formerly of Gress-Miles. During the 1990s the firm designed six new instruments, ranging from seven to 32 ranks, and rebuilt and revoiced several others in the New York and New Jersey area. In his approach to tonal design, Davidson would often cite “Father” Henry Willis, Ernest Skinner, and Cuthbert Harrison as his greatest influences.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Davidson’s focus returned to electronic instruments, working first with Makin and later with Phoenix, designing compact and portable tone cabinets, their size facilitating ease of transport as well as placement and configuration during installation. During this period he also tonally finished instruments employing the customizable Hauptwerk system in several New Jersey churches. Davidson closed the ITC pipe organ shop in 2008 but continued to tune and maintain pipe organs through 2015. Davidson was in demand as a bass chorister, singing regularly at numerous Episcopal and Methodist churches in New Jersey, as well as Rutgers University, the annual choir festival in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, and various community choruses.

Richard Davidson was predeceased in 1994 by his wife of 29 years, Ethel Burkey Davidson, an organist and fellow Episcopal Church chorister, who often served as demonstration organist on recordings of his instruments. Both were active members of the Monmouth County and Ocean County, New Jersey, chapters of the American Guild of Organists. The Davidsons were well known for their gracious hospitality, and their home was often a salon for singers and musicians. In his last years, as a widower and retiree, Davidson became a founding member of Franciscan Servants of God’s Grace, a group dedicated to caring for and ministering to elderly and infirm individuals in hospitals and nursing homes, many of whom had no other surviving families to care for their needs, and continued this charitable activity until just a few weeks before his death.

Richard French Davidson is survived by two brothers, Penn and John, a nephew Chris, and a niece Karen. Funeral services were held August 27 at Trinity Episcopal Church Red Bank, New Jersey, with burial in the parish churchyard.

Foster H. Diehl

Foster H. Diehl, 84, died August 26. He was born in Elmira, New York, and demonstrated a natural gift for sound and music in primary school, taking music lessons until he left for college. He held his first organist position at the age of 14 for a small country church outside Utica, New York.

Diehl was a resident student at the Royal School of Church Music in Addington Palace from 1958 until 1961 and was a graduate of Trinity College of Music, London, UK. In 1958 he received his A.R.C.M. diploma in organ performance from the Royal College of Music and won the highest marks awarded that year. He also held an L. Mus. degree with a major in organ and a minor in church music. In 1961 he earned a fellowship (F.T.C.L.) in organ with a minor in Gregorian chant.

Upon completion of his studies in England, Diehl returned to the United States where he was appointed organist and choirmaster at St. Joseph Catholic Church, West New York, New Jersey. He was married shortly thereafter to his British fiancée, Clare Harwood, an accomplished pianist. In 1964, at the age of 26, he was appointed organist for the Cathedral of the Holy Name, Chicago, Illinois, and subsequently assumed the position of choirmaster, leading both the men’s and boy’s choirs, and further served as director of music for Cathedral High School. In 1975 he was appointed organist and choirmaster of St. Petronille Catholic Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois. In his later years he relocated to Florida and held two more positions, at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Largo, and later at Highland Presbyterian in Clearwater, where he finally retired at the age of 75.

Foster H. Diehl is survived by his daughters Renee and Erika, grandsons Cody and Cameron, great-granddaughter Morgan, and sister Donna. He was buried at Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Cemetery, Royal Palm Beach, Florida.

Benjamin Goddard Mague

Benjamin Goddard Mague, 74, former president of Andover Organ Company, died July 4. He was born May 17, 1948, in Machias, Maine. His parents were Westminster Choir College graduates who, before settling in Maine, served as joint music directors at Plymouth Congregational Church, New Haven, Connecticut. Mague attended Mt. Hermon School and then Colby College, where he built his first organ as an interterm project. He received a Master

of Music degree in organ from the University of Wisconsin, where he also did a survey of contemporary North American tracker organ builders. A 4-1⁄2-year stint in the United States Navy as a Chaplain’s Yeoman found him in Cuba connecting with the chaplain’s daughter, Kathy, with whom he was married for 48 years.

Mague’s lifelong career was at the Andover Organ Company, where he started in 1975 and remained for 47 years, retiring in April 2022. He worked successively as a designer, project team leader, and shop manager, served as company treasurer from 1995 to 2012, and as president from 2012 to 2021. For over 52 years, Mague served as an organist at several churches and naval chapels. After overseeing the mechanical design and installation of Andover Opus 93 in 1985 at First Congregational Church of Milford, New Hampshire, he became the minister of music there, retiring in 2019.

Benjamin Goddard Mague is survived by his wife, Kathy; three children and their spouses, Jeremy (Danielle), Steve (Claire), and Anna (Garrett); and three grandchildren, Ryan, Kaylee, and Genevieve. A celebration of his life was held July 9 at First Congregational Church of Milford. Michael Eaton, an Andover colleague, played the organ that Mague designed and played for 34 years. Memorial gifts in his memory may be made to Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund by Global Giving or American Heart Association.

Donald Gordon McDonald

Donald Gordon McDonald, 97, died August 5 in Dallas, Texas. He was born February 22, 1925, in Waxahachie, Texas. In high school, he took organ lessons with Dora Poteet Barclay at Southern Methodist University. Following high school, he enrolled at SMU as a pre-med student, but left to serve in World War II in the United States Army Air Corps, Ninth Air Force, from 1943 until 1945 as a chaplain’s assistant. During the war, he was involved in the Northern France Campaign, the Ardennes Campaign, the Rhineland Campaign, and the Central Europe Campaign. For his service McDonald received the American Theater Service Medal, the European Theater Service Medal with four bronze battle stars, and the Victory Medal.

Returning from the war, McDonald attended Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to study with Alexander McCurdy, earning his Bachelor of Music degree in 1950. He continued his studies at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, where he obtained a Master of Sacred Music degree in 1952 and later a Doctor of Sacred Music degree in 1964.

McDonald served on the organ faculty at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, from 1952 to 1994 and at Union Theological Seminary from 1958 to 1966. An active recitalist, he was the first American organist to play at the annual organ week in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1963. From 1955 to 1975, he was a touring organ recitalist under the management of Colbert-LaBerge concert management. He served as the organist and minister of music at Christ Church, United Methodist, in New York City for 30 years.

Donald Gordon McDonald is survived by niece Cyndy Matthews and nephew Scotty Rutherford and their families. Memorial gifts may be given to the American Guild of Organists endowment fund at agohq.org or the Central Park Conservancy at centralparknyc.org.

John "Jack" Sievert

John “Jack” Sievert, 94, of Summerville, South Carolina, died July 24. He was born June 13, 1930, in Lake City, Iowa. After graduation from high school, he attended Drake University, Des Moines, obtaining a Bachelor of Music Education degree. Following this he served a two-year term in the United States Army during the Korean conflict. He then attended Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, earning a Master of Music degree.

Sievert joined the staff of the Reuter Organ Company, Lawrence, Kansas, where he remained for over 17 years, advancing to vice-president of that firm. In the early years he installed new Reuter pipe organs and maintained existing Reuter instruments around the United States. He made an appearance in the 1962 film Carnival of Souls in a scene filmed at the Reuter shop. In his later years with Reuter he served as sales manager.

In 1962 he married Marlene Glass, having met through a mutual friend while attending an American Guild of Organists meeting. They had two children, Steven and Susan, while living in Kansas.

In 1973 the family moved to Dalton, Ohio, where Jack joined the Schantz Organ Company of Orrville, Ohio, where he remained for 35 years until his retirement in 2008, having been vice-president of design and marketing. A charter member of the American Institute of Organbuilders, Sievert also served on its board of directors as well as president of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America. Sievert was a church organist for a number of Lutheran congregations during his lifetime. A long-time member and organist at St. John Lutheran Church, Massillon, Ohio, he also spent time as president of the congregation.

As an avid antique and classic automobile buff, Jack served as president as well as other board positions in the Canton, Ohio, chapter of the Antique Auto Club of America. He was the owner of a 1923 Model T Ford, passed down through generations of Sieverts, as well as a 19641⁄2 Mustang purchased from the showroom floor.

The Sieverts relocated to Summerville, South Carolina, in 2018 to enjoy their retirement years. Jack Sievert is survived by his wife Marlene (Glass) Sievert; son Steven Sievert of Massillon, Ohio; daughter Susan Messersmith of North Charleston, South Carolina; son-in-law Charles Messersmith of Ladson, South Carolina; and grandson Andrew Messersmith.

A memorial service was held July 29 at Grace Lutheran Church, Summerville. Inurnment will follow at a later date at the Grace Church columbarium.

Nunc Dimittis

Elizabeth Ayers Compton Bellocchio, 65, of Haverhill, Massachusetts, died August 30. She was an organist, organbuilder, historian, and museum and arts administrator, known professionally as Lisa Compton. Born October 9, 1953, in Greenfield, Massachusetts, she grew up in Exeter, New Hampshire. She began piano lessons at Ellerslie School, Great Malvern, England, where the family lived for a year while her father was an exchange professor at Malvern College.

Lisa Compton was executive director of the Seneca Falls Historical Society, Seneca Falls, New York, from 2000 until 2002, and was from 1998 to 2000 executive director of the Friends of Vista House, Corbett, Oregon. She was the first professional director of the Old Colony History Museum in Taunton, Massachusetts, 1982–1996, and served on the Taunton Historic District Commission, revising and editing the second edition (1986) of Taunton Architecture: A Reflection of the City’s History.

She researched and wrote many entries as editor of the Organ Historical Society’s 2005 Southeastern Massachusetts convention handbook and served on the convention planning committee, co-chaired by her husband, Matthew Bellocchio. She was consultant for the restorations of historic organs at the Congregational Church (c. 1834 E. & G. G. Hook), Berkeley, Massachusetts, and Pilgrim Congregational Church (1890 Johnson & Son), Taunton, Massachusetts.

In 1975, as a fellow in the Summer Museum Studies program at Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts, she researched the history of dancing and ballrooms in early New England and presented programs and lectures based on her research. She later served for two years as assistant curator at the Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, creating the summer Old Deerfield Sunday Afternoon Concert Series that continues to date.

She trained and supervised tour guides at Castle Hill, the mansion on the Crane Estate, Ipswich, Massachusetts, as an employee in the Education Department of The Trustees of Reservations, 2007–2010. She was administrator at the Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill, 2011–2017, and was a librarian at the Graves Music Library of Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, from 2010 until her recent illness prohibited continuing.

As an organbuilder, Lisa Compton was a member of the American Institute of Organbuilders, having been among the first women to take and pass the AIO examination in 1979 to receive the Colleague Certificate. Employed by the Berkshire Organ Company, she became the New York City service representative. She later worked occasionally with other firms and with her husband at the Roche Organ Co., Taunton, Massachusetts; Bond Organ Builders, Inc., Portland, Oregon; Parsons Pipe Organ Builders, Canandaigua, New York; and Andover Organ Company, Inc., Methuen, Massachusetts.

A 1975 graduate of Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, with a degree in art history and music, she studied organ with Vernon Gotwals at Smith and earlier with Richard Bennet, organist at her high school, Concord Academy. In 1970, she helped to relocate the 1872 E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings Opus 676 to the academy chapel (and since relocated to the Smithsonian Institution). She served as music director and organist at First Baptist Church, Northampton, Massachusetts; in Taunton, Massachusetts, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, St. John’s Episcopal Church, and Pilgrim Congregational Church; First Presbyterian Church, Seneca Falls, New York; and as accompanist for the children’s choir at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Portland, Oregon, where she was also a substitute organist at other churches.

Elizabeth Ayers Compton Bellocchio is survived by her organbuilder husband Matthew Bellocchio and their daughter Holly Bellocchio Durso of Abington, Massachusetts. She is also survived by her brother Karl Compton of Rockport, Texas, and her sister Carol Compton of Keene, New Hampshire. A funeral was conducted September 28 at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Taunton, where she had been a member since 1983. She sang in the choir, served on many committees and two terms on the vestry, and sewed the church banner that hangs by the organ case (1899 George Jardine & Son, Op. 1257/1980 Roche Organ Co.). Donations in her memory may be made to the Memorial Fund of St. Thomas Episcopal Church or to the Old Colony History Museum, 66 Church Green, Taunton, MA 02780.

Jared Jacobsen, organist, liturgist, choir director, and community faith leader, died August 27. He was born March 18, 1949, in New Castle, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Girard, Pennsylvania, graduating from Girard High School in 1967. He began music studies at age five as a piano student at the Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, New York, and had returned every summer since. He studied piano at Villa Maria College, Erie, Pennsylvania, and later enrolled in Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree with honors. At the University of Arizona in Tucson, he earned a Master of Music degree and pursued doctoral study as a Haldeman Fellow in keyboard performance and choral studies.

He began his church music career at age thirteen as organist for Grace Episcopal Chapel, Fairview, Pennsylvania. A California resident since 1976, he served as fifth civic organist of the City of San Diego from 1978 through 1984, playing weekly concerts on the Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park. In 1984 he moved to San Francisco to serve a Catholic parish. While there he was organist for the 1987 papal Mass in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park for a congregation of 70,000 and a viewing audience of 70,000,000; the following year he was invited by Pope John Paul II to the Vatican as a delegate to its historic First World Conference on Church Music. A Presbyterian church called him to service in San Diego in the fall of 1991.

Since 1996, Jacobsen served as the organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music for the Chautauqua Institution. He presided over the Massey Memorial Organ of four manuals located in the amphitheater. He also led the Motet Choir for daily worship services and the Chautauqua Choir for Sunday morning and evening worship, played weekly recitals on the Massey organ and the 1893 Tallman mechanical-action organ in the Hall of Christ, and appeared frequently as soloist with the Chautauqua Symphony and Music School Festival Orchestras.

In recent years, when not at Chautauqua during summer months, Jacobsen served as director of music for First Lutheran Church, San Diego, California, and as a member of the performing arts faculty of The Bishop’s School, an independent college-preparatory middle and high school in La Jolla, California.

A memorial service for Jared Jacobsen was held August 30 in the Chautauqua Amphitheater, the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson presiding.

David Stephen Boe died April 28, 2020, in Chicago, Illinois. Since 2012, he and his wife, Sigrid North Boe, had lived at a Chicago retirement community, where they moved to be near family.

David Boe was born in Duluth, Minnesota, and spent most of his early years in Eau Claire and Menomonie, Wisconsin. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and his mother was a singer and choral conductor. Boe received his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, in 1958, and his Master of Music degree in organ performance from Syracuse University in 1960, studying under Arthur Poister. He received a J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship for additional study with Helmut Walcha at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Frankfurt, Germany. It was while Boe was studying with Walcha at the Dreikönigskirche that he met one of the pastor’s daughters, Sigrid North, who became his wife. They were married by Sigrid’s father, Pastor Paulus North, on July 23, 1961; Walcha, a friend of the North family, served as organist. When the Boes returned to the United States, he taught organ for one year at the University of Georgia (1961–1962).

In 1962, David Boe joined the organ and harpsichord faculty of Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio. He also became director of music at First Lutheran Church, Lorain, Ohio. He returned to Europe in 1968 while on sabbatical to study with Gustav Leonhardt and to conduct research on historical instruments in the Netherlands and northern Germany. Under Boe’s leadership, in 1970, First Lutheran Church, Lorain, awarded a contract to John Brombaugh for a new organ to be built according to historical principles. This landmark instrument and the church were destroyed by fire in 2014. Boe served the church until his retirement on Pentecost Sunday, 2002.

David Boe was appointed the ninth dean of Oberlin Conservatory in 1976 after having served as acting dean from 1974 to 1975. He later served as interim dean on several occasions. In the 1980s, he served as vice president of the American Organ Academy; completed a four-year term as national president of the American honor society in music, Pi Kappa Lambda; and was secretary of the National Association of Schools of Music, chairing music accreditation teams or serving as a consultant to music programs at over thirty-five institutions. He later served as trustee for the Westfield Center for many years.

As a performer, Boe was represented by WindWerk Artists and concertized in the United States and Europe. He recorded on the Gasparo and Veritas labels, and he appeared on the nationally televised program The Wind at One’s Fingertips. During his 1991 sabbatical, he served as visiting professor of organ for the spring semester at Florida State University, Tallahassee, and as visiting professor of organ at the University of Notre Dame during the fall semester.

David Boe played an important part in establishing the organ collection at Oberlin, including the installation of John Brombaugh Opus 25 (1981), a meantone organ in Fairchild Chapel, and C. B. Fisk, Inc., Opus 116 (2001) in Finney Chapel, built in the style of Cavaillé-Coll. Upon his retirement, he donated his residence organ, a one-manual, six-stop Brombaugh organ, to Oberlin, where it was installed in the front of Fairchild Chapel. He served as consultant for the 2004 organ built by Halbert Gober for First Church (UCC) in Oberlin and performed on the dedicatory recital.

As a 70th birthday gift in 2006, four of Boe’s former students commissioned a new two-manual and pedal clavichord built in Göteborg, Sweden, by Joel Speerstra, a former Boe student at Oberlin. For Boe’s 75th birthday in 2011, two alumni honored both David and Sigrid Boe with the purchase of the two-manual and pedal organ originally built for SUNY, Purchase, New York, by the Bozeman-Gibson Organ Company in the style of Gottfried Silbermann. In 2011, Boe’s undergraduate alma mater, St. Olaf College, awarded him its Alumni Achievement Award. At that time, St. Olaf recorded a video at the Boe residence in Oberlin that is available online: https://www.stolaf.edu/multimedia/play/?p=28 (the interview begins at 29:20). 

David S. Boe is survived by his wife Sigrid; their son Stephen and his wife Joo; their son Eric and his wife Lisa; their four granddaughters Sydney, Haley, Alexis, and Olivia; and his two sisters, Judith Boe and Carol Brann.

Jane Parker-Smith, 70, died June 24 in London, UK. Born May 20, 1950, she studied at the Royal College of Music in London, soon earning a number of prizes and scholarships, including the Walford Davies Prize for organ performance. After a further period of work with Nicolas Kynaston, a French government scholarship enabled her to complete her studies in Paris with Jean Langlais.

She made her London debut at Westminster Cathedral at age twenty and two years later made her first solo appearance at the BBC Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall. She would proceed to concertize in concert halls, cathedrals, and churches throughout the world.

She recorded a wide range of solo repertoire for RCA, Classics for Pleasure, L’Oiseau Lyre, EMI, ASV, Collins Classics, Motette, and AVIE. In addition, she collaborated with Maurice André in a duo recording of music for trumpet and organ. She performed numerous times on radio and television with special feature programs on the BBC, German, and Swiss television.

Highlights in her concert career included performances in venues and international festivals such as Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall, London (both solo and concerto performances); Three Choirs Festival, City of London Festival, Bath Festival, and Blenheim Palace (Winston Churchill Memorial Concert) in the UK; Jyväskylä Festival, Finland; Stockholm Concert Hall, Sweden; Hong Kong Arts Festival; Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto; Festival Paris Quartier D’Été, France; Festival Cicio El Organo en la Iglesia, Buenos Aires; Festival Internationale di Musica Organistica Magadino, Switzerland; Cube Concert Hall, Shiroishi, Japan; Athens Organ Festival; Severance Hall, Cleveland, Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, and Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; Sejong Cultural Centre, Seoul, Korea; Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore; Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK; Mariinsky Concert Hall, St. Petersburg, Russia; and ZK Matthews Hall, University of South Africa, Pretoria. For the American Guild of Organists, she performed for the 1996 centennial convention in New York City, as well as national conventions in 2002 in Philadelphia and 2012 in Nashville. She was represented in the United States by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc.

Jane Parker-Smith’s concerto repertoire brought her performances with many leading orchestras, including the BBC Symphony and BBC Concert Orchestras, London Symphony, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, Philharmonia, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Athens State Orchestra, and Prague Chamber Orchestra.

Jane Parker-Smith was an Honorary Fellow of the Guild of Musicians and Singers and a member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians. She was listed in World Who’s Who and International Who’s Who in Music and in 2014 was chosen as one of “The 1000 Most Influential Londoners” by the London Evening Standard newspaper.

Hampson A. Sisler of New York, New York, died May 25. He was born in 1932 in Yonkers, New York, and began his musical education at age 12, studying with David McK. Williams and Norman Coke-Jephcott. He earned a licentiate in organ and related subjects from Trinity College of Music, London, at age 16 and achieved the fellowship certification in the American Guild of Organists at age 17, the youngest ever to receive this distinction. Sisler spent more than 50 years as an ophthalmologist and oculoplastic surgeon in New York City. He was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

Sisler began playing organ in church when he was eleven. He was active as an organist and choir director serving various churches, most notably Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn and Central Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. As a composer, he had more than 100 works to his credit, including pieces for organ, chorus, concert band, chamber and symphony orchestra. His works have been performed and recorded worldwide with orchestras in the United States as well as in Argentina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Israel, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, and Ukraine. As an organ recitalist, he performed in and around New York City, including the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

He was recently named “one of the significant composers of contemporary America” by The Organ magazine, London. His first works were published at age nineteen starting with H. W. Gray Co. as well as Jos. Fischer & Co., Belwin Mills, E. P. Adams, Inc., World Library Publications, Laurendale, and MorningStar Music Publishers. 

Hampson A. Sisler was predeceased by his spouse, Gene Iacovetta, in 2019. Survivors include a nephew, Thomas Sisler, two nieces, Carrie Kozikowski and Nancy Westphal, and a cousin, William Nodine.