Dr. Jane A. Fitzharris a native of Dover, New Hampshire has recently been appointed as the Director of Music at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Fitzharris had been adjunct faculty at Loyola University prior to Hurricane Katrina and returned to the Northeast as a result of the devastation of New Orleans where she had lived for eleven years. She also served as organist and music director at Grace Episcopal Church and St. George’s Episcopal Church in uptown New Orleans in the 1990’s.
Dr. Fitzharris obtained her doctorate of musical arts degree in organ performance from Louisiana State University in 2006 under the tutelage of Herndon Spillman winner of the Grand Prix du Disque of France. She completed her masters in organ performance and theology from Boston University as a recipient of a Boston University Merit Scholarship graduating magna cum laude.
Her dissertation is entitled Compostional Techniques in Thomas Kerr Jr.’s Anguished American Easter, 1968 and Their Application to the Theme of African-American Theology and is published by Louisiana State University. She performed the work on her final doctoral recital.
As a teacher Dr. Fitzharris taught applied piano and music theory at Notre Dame College Prepatory School in Manchester, New Hampshire while maintaining a private piano studio in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She continued teaching applied piano as a teaching assistant at Louisiana State University.
As a recitalist Dr. Fitzharris has performed at the Old North Church in Boston,
Boston University, on the famous Holtkamp organ in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, at the First Methodist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisana, and most recently at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
Dr. Fitzharris’s principal organ teachers have been Max Miller, Warren Hutton, and Herndon Spillman. She is currently coaching with Stephen Hamilton of The Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City.
Dr. Fitzharris is a member of the American Guild of Organists, College Music Society, and Music Teacher’s National Association.
|
