(Cazenovia, NY – May 2015) The First Presbyterian of Cazenovia, located at 27 Albany St. will host Syracuse University organist, Annie Laver, performing on the church’s Charles Fisk organ for the Benjamin J. Lake Memorial Concert on Friday June 5 at 8 p.m. The concert is free and open to the public.
Laver has been an Instructor at the Eastman School of Music where she taught a four-semester Organ Repertoire seminar for graduate organ majors and Healthy Keyboard Technique lessons for all incoming organ students. In addition to her teaching duties, Annie worked as Coordinator of Organ Outreach Programs and Events for the Department of Organ, Sacred Music, and Historical Keyboards, which included running the annual Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative (EROI) Festival, and directing summer organ institutes for high school students and a retreat for Eastman organ alumni.
Laver frequently performs solo organ recitals in the United States and Europe.
In 2010 she was awarded second prize in the American Guild of Organists’ National Young Artist Competition in Organ Performance (NYACOP). She has been a featured recitalist at numerous conventions, including the Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival, the Organ Pedagogy Conference of the American Guild of Organists, the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, and the Region I & II Convention of the American Guild of Organists.
Laver studied organ with Hans Davidsson, William Porter, and David Higgs while pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees at the Eastman School of Music. She began her organ studies in earnest with Mark Steinbach as an undergraduate student at Brown University and subsequently spent a year in the Netherlands under the tutelage of Jacques van Oortmerssen at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.
This Memorial Concert Series is in memory of The Reverend Dr. Benjamin J. Lake, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Cazenovia from 1961 to 1986. Reverend Lake was a graduate of Hamilton College and Union Theological Seminary and a true lover of music.
More information can be found on the church’s website at www.cazpres.org.