Organist performance June 19
DEXTER — At 5:30 p.m. on Friday, June 19 Sarah Johnson, a Dexter Regional High School graduate, will be home to perform an organ concert at The First Universalist Church on Church Street.
Since leaving her hometown of Garland, Johnson has studied at Vassar College, Boston University and the Eastman School of Music. Currently she’s the principal organist at Trinity on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut. She’ll be bringing Bach and Mendelssohn home for all to enjoy.
Join us for this free community concert. Donations will be accepted, with all proceeds benefiting the preservation of this local treasure.
Friends of the Dexter Meeting House is a local non-profit working to preserve the Universalist Church. Erected in 1829, it’s been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1985, and will soon celebrate its bicentennial.
Johnson is the associate director of music and principal organist at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven Connecticut. She is a candidate for the doctor of musical arts at the Eastman School of Music, where she studies with David Higgs.
A native of Garland, Johnson began her organ lessons with Kevin Birch, organist and music director at S. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor. In her undergraduate degree at Vassar College, she studied organ with Gail Archer and piano with Todd Crow. Johnson holds a master of sacred music from Boston University, where she studied organ with Peter Sykes.
Since beginning college, Johnson has performed in New York City at Central Synagogue, in Boston at Old West, Trinity Cople, and Holy Name Parish, in Atlanta at the Cathedral of St. Philip, and internationally in Toronto at the Cathedral Church of St. James, and in Naumburg, Germany at St. Wenzel. She was named an E. Power Biggs Fellow of the Organ Historical Society in 2013 and featured as a rising star and guest recitalist at the 2017 Musforum Conference in Omaha, Nebraska.
Johnson is a board member of the St. John’s Organ Society in Bangor, dedicated to the preservation of E. & G.G. Hook Opus 288, and recently performed on their 29th annual concert series. She has also performed at Methuen Memorial Music Hall in Methuen, Massachusetts on their 74th and 76th annual concert series. During her time in Boston, Johnson was organ scholar at Holy Name Parish in West Roxbury and assistant librarian at the Organ Library of the American Guild of Organists. In Rochester, Johnson was the organ assistant (VanDelinder Prize Winner) at Christ Church Episcopal from 2018-20 and minister of music at Church of the Ascension from 2020-23.