Organ concert to honor music professor

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Feb. 8, 2016) An organ recital will celebrate a music professor’s three decades of service to California Lutheran University.

The Orvil & Gloria Franzen Organ Program Series/Dr. Daniel Geeting Honorary Concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26 in Samuelson Chapel on the Thousand Oaks campus. Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra will present a recital with the theme “Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs.”

Geeting, who has been on the Cal Lutheran faculty for 32 years, conducts the University Symphony and teaches music history and music appreciation in addition to saxophone and clarinet. He also serves as chair of the Artists & Speakers Committee, which brings performances and lectures to campus. The Canoga Park resident earned a master’s degree in music from the University of Southern California and a doctorate in musical arts from the University of Oregon. He received an institute certificate from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and previously held professorships at Cornell College and the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

The program will include works by Ruiter-Feenstra in addition to Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Böhm, Dieterich Buxtehude and Paul Sifler. The concert will feature Lenten psalms with counterpoint songs of hope, and works depicting faith, creed, atrocities and wonders in the world. Ruiter-Feenstra will improvise on two beloved Scandinavian hymns to conclude the program.

Soprano Heidi Valencia Vas and trumpet player Bill Barrett, both Cal Lutheran faculty members, will collaborate on the program.

Ruiter-Feenstra is an international performer and teacher who was a featured artist and clinician at the 2014 National Conference of the American Guild of Organists in Boston. She wrote the acclaimed book “Bach and the Art of Improvisation,” which presents the historical approach to improvisation. For more than five centuries, improvisation was the normal way of playing a keyboard instrument, particularly the organ. Her other publications include “Muse in Peace” and “Muse at School,” which feature a cappella songs for young children.

She holds a master’s degree and doctorate in organ performance and pedagogy from the University of Iowa, with emphases in conducting, sacred music and music theory. Ruiter-Feenstra’s bachelor’s degree in organ performance and choral music education is from the Dutch immigrant school Dordt College. Her postdoctoral work focused on historic keyboard instruments in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy. She has taught at Eastern Michigan University and Bethany College, where Cal Lutheran organist Kyle Johnson was one of her students.

The event is free, but donations will be accepted. For information, call the Music Department at 805-493-3306 or visit CalLutheran.edu.