Lunchtime Pipe Organ Series: Dr. Justin Murphy-Mancini

Justin Murphy-Mancini is a keyboardist, composer, and liturgical musician living on the North Shore of Massachusetts. He specializes in the performance of music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque on the organ and harpsichord, as well as the work of living composers. He maintains a continued interest in the work of late medieval Germany, the English virginalists, and the music of Charles Tournemire and his students. 

Justin is a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where he earned degrees in historical performance, organ, composition, and philosophy. He earned a Ph.D. in composition at the University of California, San Diego.

His compositional activity centers on extended collaboration with soloists and small chamber formations. Primarily, his work has explored the development of unique musical structures through the intersection of medieval poetic forms and emphasis on timbre as the meaning-generating dimension of the music. Justin has written works for members of TAK Ensemble and the Mivos Quartet, Ensemble SurPlus, and soprano Hillary Jean Young. His most recent large-scale project was a secular oratorio setting passages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the original Old English for three voices and chamber orchestra. He also writes regularly for amateur vocal ensembles and is a frequent arranger of folk music for community and church choirs.

A dedicated church musician since the age of 13, Justin currently serves the First Religious Society, Unitarian Universalist, of Newburyport, MA as Director of Church Music, where he directs the Adult Choir and oversees church-wide music making by both adults and young people. At the First Religious Society, Justin presides over the last surviving organ by Newburyport organbuilder Joseph Alley, originally built in 1834. He has also served Episcopal, Methodist, UCC, and UU congregations as organist, chorister, and conductor.

He has appeared in recital on the Old West Organ Series in Boston, MA, the Malmgren Concert Series at Syracuse University, and at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in San Diego, CA. He maintains an active personal recording schedule that aims to make previously unrecorded music especially by women, people of color, and unknown Renaissance composers available to listeners online. As a chamber musician, Justin has concertized around the United States, and has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival and the BRQ Vantaa Festival in Vantaa, Finland. He can be heard on releases from Acis Productions, Marginal Frequency, and Another Timbre, among others.

Musical Program for February 1st

Passacaglia in d, BuxWV 161    -Dieterich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707)

Sonata in D minor, Op. 65, No. 6   -Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47)

I. Chorale and Variations: Andante sostenuto - Allegro molto

II. Fuga

III. Andante

Trois Paraphrases sur “Veni creator”   -Naji Hakim (b. 1956)

I. Ductore sic te praevio

II. Fons vivus

III. Virtute firmans perpeti

He Leadeth Me     -Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1928)

Passacaglia in c, BWV 582    -J.S. Bach (1685-1750)