Saturday
September 12, 2026
9:00 a.m.
Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist
The public is welcome to attend.
Performers
Passacaglia, C-moll – BWV 582 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) 
Scarlett Thomsen, 13, has been playing piano for nine years. Her first experiences on organ were playing for her church, Mount Saint Michael, when she was about ten years old. Since last year’s Organ Academy, she has been studying with Edward Hurd. She is also a new member of the American Guild of Organists. When not playing the organ, Scarlett loves to read, hang out with friends, and sing soprano in the parish choir.
Additional performers coming soon.
Clinician
Justin J. Murphy-Mancini is a keyboardist and composer dedicated to exciting and enriching audiences with music from throughout time and space. He appears regularly in concert as an organist, harpsichordist, and collaborative pianist, with a repertoire that spans the entire written history of keyboard music. His recent solo appearances include venues such as Blessed Sacrament Church (Wash.), Spreckels Organ Pavilion (Calif.), Mechanics Hall (Mass.), Syracuse University (N.Y.), Methuen Memorial Music Hall (Mass.), and Epsilon Spires (Vt.). Jay is committed to bringing diverse and wide-ranging programs that show off the unique characteristics of the instruments he plays. With an exceptionally wide-ranging repertoire, he juxtaposes familiar and beloved works with pieces by unfamiliar or underrepresented musicians. In particular, the music of the Renaissance, 19th-century United States, and 20th-century France are areas of particular interest. He is also a champion of music by living composers: since 2011, he has premiered over a dozen new works for the organ and the harpsichord and has specifically promoted the works of Emma Lou Diemer and Eva-Maria Houben.
Jay can be heard on recorded releases from Marginal Frequency, Another Timbre, and Mayor Tacoghost. Jay’s debut solo album, Cultivating a Living Tradition: The Organ in New England (available on Acis), surveys American organ music from the early Federal period to the present day on the historic 1834 Joseph Alley organ at the First Religious Society (Unitarian Universalist) in Newburyport, Mass. It has been hailed as “most imaginative” (MusicWeb International) and “immensely listenable” (textura). 
Jay maintains an active presence on YouTube, making recordings of less well-known music available both to performers and listeners around the world. In addition to regular uploads of individual works, he has presented surveys of music by Florence Price and Modesta Bor. In 2025-26, he recorded the entire Görlitz Organ Tablature by Samuel Scheidt on the Paul Fritts organ, Op. 18, (pictured) at Pacific Lutheran University (PLU). He is currently recording the 12 chorale preludes of Jeanne Demessieux on instruments located in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area. All of his video recordings can be found on his YouTube page. As a composer, Jay inhabits accessible and avant-garde domains equally, writing for both professional and amateur musicians. His music has been performed by Ensemble SurPlus and the Callithumpian Consort as well as by members of the Mivos Quartet and TAK. Much of his original output is inspired by themes and texts from the early Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England. His current projects include a large-scale work for organ and a series of pieces of choral music for concert performance.
Jay discovered a love of teaching as an undergraduate student. He is the inaugural Paul Fritts Endowed Chair in Organ Studies and Performance at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash. At PLU, he teaches a variety of courses in addition to primary and secondary organ study; he also serves as University Organist and accompanies the Choral Union. Previous appointments include Artist Faculty in Organ at the University of Southern Maine and lecturer positions at University of California, San Diego. From 2023-24, he served as faculty representative of the Young Organist Collaborative (Portsmouth, N.H.), an organization founded to support the next generation of organists. Jay has served as Clerk of the Old West Organ Society and as a trustee of the Methuen Memorial Music Hall, where he continues to support their work as a Friend of the Hall. In his capacity as a sacred musician, Jay has served congregations across the United States for over 20 years. From 2019-24, he was Director of Church Music at the First Religious Society in Newburyport, where he directed the Candlelight Chorale and curated the Jean C. Wilson Music Series. He has also served Unitarian Universalist, Episcopal, Methodist, and UCC congregations in California, Ohio, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. He continues to be active in supporting music in worship at congregations around the Puget Sound. Jay began his musical studies with the piano at age four before serious study of the organ and double bass. His early mentors include Galina Gertsenzon, Cheryl Wadsworth, Lynn Lovell, Domenick Fiore, Adrienne Kim, and Nicolas Scherzinger. He earned degrees in organ performance, composition, historical keyboards, and philosophy from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Jack Mitchener, Josh Levine, Webb Wiggins, Marie-Louise Langlais, Steven Plank, and Lisa Goode Crawford. Jay holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University of California, San Diego, where his principal teachers were Katharina Rosenberger, Natacha Diels, and Rand Steiger. He has also undertaken post-graduate study with Christian Lane and Margaret Irwin-Brandon.
