Jack Mitchener is featured on a new recording on the Raven label, Romantic to Modern (Raven OAR-958, $15.98 postpaid worldwide from RavenCD.com). Playing the Fisk organ at Oberlin College, Mitchener surveys French and German organ music ca. 1840–1940, including three rarely recorded works by Guy Ropartz (1864–1955): Introduction and Allegro moderato; Theme and Variations; and Prière, along with Mendelssohn, Schumann, Franck, Vierne, and Alain.
Mitchener’s previously released CDs include Dulcet Tones (Raven OAR-950), the first recording of a recently discovered organ concerto by one of the 18th-century Prussian brothers Carl Heinrich or Johann Gottlieb Graun as part of an entire CD devoted to the oldest American-built two-manual organ, built in 1799 for the Moravian church at Salem, North Carolina, and now restored in a purpose-built concert hall there. He has also recorded a disc of Christmas organ music on the Oberlin Fisk, released in 2012 (Raven OAR-936).
Associate Professor of Organ and University Organist at Mercer University, Macon, Georgia, and director of the Townsend-McAfee Institute of Church Music there, Jack Mitchener is also organist/choirmaster at Christ Church, Episcopal, in Macon. He has taught at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, the Eastman School of Music Community Education Division, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, and Salem College. His concert schedule is arranged by Penny Lorenz Artist Management (www.organists.net).
