Visiting Artist Residency: Nicole Keller

11:30-1 p.m. Organ Masterclass with select students studying organ at Westminster Choir College. 

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Ms. Keller’s debut commercial recording, Those Americans, was released by Raven CDs in 2024. The album is praised as “an exciting programme of twentieth- and twenty-first-century works by composers from the USA…Nicole Keller meets their considerable technical challenges with aplomb, as the outer movements bristle with finely controlled energy, while the contrasts of the inner movements are equally finely captured” (Organists’ Review). The music paints a picture of the diverse landscape of 20th century American organ music through the works of Rayner Brown, Calvin Hampton, Florence Price, William Grant Still, and Anne Wilson. 

Hailed as a “skilled and stylish player with a keen ear for orchestration” (The American Organist Magazine) Nicole Keller has earned a reputation for colorful, virtuosic performances praised by audiences and presenters as unique concert experiences. She has performed on significant instruments in historic venues including St. Patrick Cathedral, New York; Cathédrale Notre-Dame, Paris; Dom St. Stephan, Passau; St. Patrick Cathedral, Armagh, Northern Ireland; and The Kazakh National University for the Arts, Astana, Kazakhstan. 

Equally at home as a soloist and chamber musician, Ms. Keller’s appearances with orchestra include concertos, works for small chamber orchestra, and large works involving organ, harpsichord, and piano. In recent seasons, she debuted world premieres for solo organ, chamber orchestra and vocal ensemble including Concerto for Organ No. 5 in memoriam György Ligeti by Bálint Karosi and the debut of Handel: Made in America by Terrance McKnight and Pat Eakin Young at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She has extensive experience as a continuo player in performances of Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions, Christmas Oratorio, and Mass in B minor in addition to a host of baroque cantatas and chamber music. 

Ms. Keller was recently appointed to the faculty of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan, leading a program focused on discipline, scholarship, and love for the instrument and its many possibilities and repertoire in all forms. She is dedicated to teaching and mentoring students to prepare for careers as performers, teachers, and church musicians as well as musicians who create new opportunities and identities for the modern organist.

Ms. Keller's extensive church music experience includes work in with volunteer and professional choirs and instrumental ensembles devoted to the highest level of music for worship.  She has created organ and choral scholar programs at small and mid size parishes, developed successful children's choir programs, and has led choirs on tour in the states and abroad including choral residencies at Bristol Cathedral, U.K. and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland. 

Ms. Keller received the Performer’s Certificate and the Master of Music Degree in Organ Performance and Literature at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York under the tutelage of David Higgs. While at Eastman, she studied continuo with Arthur Haas and improvisation with Gerre Hancock. She received the Bachelor of Music Degree in Piano Performance from the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music in Berea, Ohio, where she studied piano with George Cherry and Jean Stell and organ with Margaret Scharf.

Nicole Keller is represented in North American exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.