Seigel to give organ concert at Bluff Park United Methodist

Bluff Park United Methodist Church’s annual organ concert will feature Canterbury United Methodist Church organist and choirmaster Lester Seigel.

The concert is scheduled for 4 p.m. March 5.

Seigel started as the organist at Canterbury United Methodist in Mountain Brook in 1989 and became choirmaster in 1995. He is a conductor, teacher and recitalist in chamber and organ music.

Seigel is the Joseph Hugh Thomas Professor of Music at Birmingham-Southern College and leads the college’s Hilltop Singers concert choir. He also is the conductor for Sursum Corda, an ensemble of 19 professional vocalists now in its 10th season.

He has taken the Hilltop Singers for performances in Europe and gone on national tours with both the Hilltop Singers and Sursum Corda.

He led the Birmingham-Southern Choirs in a performance at Carnegie Hall last year and has taken his groups to perform at many other national and regional venues, including the Washington National Cathedral at Lincoln Center, St. James’ Cathedral in Chicago and the American Choral Directors Association’s national conference in Chicago.

Seigel is a published arranger with Oxford University Press and, on his latest sabbatical, conducted research on Jewish music as a Jacob Rader Marcus Fellow at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.

Seigel’s March 5 recital was specifically selected for the Moller organ at Bluff Park and features selections from the 19th-century Romantic era by John Stainer, Johannes Brahms, Caesar Franck, Camille Saint-Saens, Clarence Dickinson and Julius Reubke.

Bluff Park United Methodist Church is at 733 Valley St. For more information, call the church at 822-0910.