The Yale Institute of Sacred Music (ISM) announces the retirement of Thomas Murray, professor in the practice of organ and Yale University Organist, effective at the end of the 2018–2019 academic year. Since 1981 he has taught graduate organ students and select undergraduates. Murray’s performing career has taken him to all parts of Europe and to Japan, Australia, and Argentina. He has appeared as a soloist with the Pittsburgh, Houston, Milwaukee, and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, the National Chamber Orchestra in Washington, D.C., and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra during its tour of Finland in 1996. The New York City AGO Chapter named him International Performer of the Year in 1986. In 2003, he received a diploma honoris causa as a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists in England, and in 2007 the Yale School of Music awarded him the Gustave Stoeckel Award for excellence in teaching. He is also the recipient of an honorary fellowship from the Royal Canadian College of Organists.
Martin Jean, director of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, has announced a festschrift in Professor Murray’s honor, to be edited by Patrick McCreless, professor of music theory at Yale. The volume, tentatively called The Orchestral Organist, will explore ways that music has migrated from and to the organ and other musical forces. Inspired by Murray’s life-long interest in the practice of transcribing music for the organ, this new volume will combine the work of scholars who will look at this process through the ages.
For the 2019–2020 year, Jon Laukvik has been appointed visiting professor of organ. Laukvik, who retired from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, Germany, in 2016, has contributed two volumes to Historical Performance Practice in Organ Playing and has edited a third; he has composed works for solo organ, organ with other instruments, as well as vocal and instrumental works; and has concertized throughout the world. At Yale, he will take up Thomas Murray’s teaching duties for the year.
