Barbara Bruns, Christ Church minister of music, will offer the third event in the series “Music at Christ Church Andover” on Sunday evening, Dec. 2.
Residents are invited to a recital on the new C. B. Fisk organ at 4:30 p.m., followed by a service of Advent Lessons and Carols with the parish choir, Schola, and St. Cecilia Choristers at 5 p.m.
Reservations are not required. A free-will offering will be taken.
Guest organ recitalist will be Carolyn Day Skelton, faculty emerita of Phillips Academy, where she was school organist and instructor of music for over 30 years. She has studied organ at Union Theological Seminary in New York, holds a master of music degree from New England Conservatory, Boston, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the Academy of Music in Vienna, Austria. She has studied with Warren Scharf, James Tallis, Anton Heiller, Alec Wyton and Donald Willing.
Featured on the organ recital will be mid- and late-Baroque works of Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Sebastian Bach particularly suited to the Fisk organ, according to a release. The Buxtehude Magnificat is based on the principal chant for an evening service. The Bach work is based on the German hymn for the first Sunday of Advent, Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland (Now Come, Savior of the Nations). Following the Bach work will be variations on the same hymn by Austrian organist and composer Anton Heiller.
The service of Advent Lessons and Carols will feature some of the best known works of American composer Paul Manz and British composers Charles Wood, Boris Ord and Simon Lindley, according to Bruns.
