The Organ Academy members have been working diligently to prepare for this performance. You will be impressed by their enthusiasm and talent!
Location
Central Lutheran Church/City Covenant
Program
Organists
Maria Truong, 19, is a student of Dr. Janet Ahrend. She has been playing piano for 12 years and organ for 5 years. In addition to the keyboards, Truong has studied violin and harp and sings in her church choir with her siblings. Her non-musical interests that she rarely gets around to include sewing, reading, and archery.
Faustina Sattler is a seventh grader at St. Charles Catholic School in Spokane. She sings in the Schola choir. She had a couple of years of piano lessons that helped her to develop her skills. Since then, she has been playing the piano on her own. Sattler has always been interested in playing the organ and is drawn to its unique sounds. The Organ Academy has given her an opportunity to learn to play. She is an Organ Academy student of Dr. Joseph Schubert.
Radislav Kozlov is a pianist and organist currently studying music at Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC). He studies piano with Dr. Rosi Guererro and John Conte and organ with Dr. Janet Ahrend. Also, Kozlov plays in the SFCC Community Concert Band with Dr. David Larsen.
Mark Klimok comes to the organ via accordion and tuba. In addition to his love for music, he enjoys the outdoors which is a perfect fit for his full-time work for the Idaho Department of Agriculture. A graduate of Mead High School and Eastern Washington University, Klimok celebrates his Ukrainian heritage through involvement with a local Slavic congregation. He and his wife are expecting birth of their first son in June! Klimok is an Organ Academy student of Dr. Joseph Schubert.
Lucia Harder, 18, is just finishing high school. She has been playing both organ and piano on and off since she was seven and, along with her parents and sister Grace, has been singing in church choirs since she was five. She particularly loves Renaissance polyphony, with her favorite being Tomás Luis de Victoria. Harder is an avid athlete who is an excellent swimmer and hiker and is good at almost every sport. She plans to pursue a career in physical therapy.
Grace Harder, 19, will graduate from North Idaho College with an Associate of Arts degree this summer. She has been playing organ since she was eleven and piano since she was seven, and also likes to play some of the woodwinds although organ is her main passion! Growing up in Wyoming gave her an appreciation for beauty and she loves camping and hiking and sports like swimming and ultimate frisbee. Harder continues organ study next fall.
Joseph Gaunt, more commonly known as Joey by his friends and family, is 14 years old and is currently homeschooled. He will be attending Chesterton Academy of Notre Dame High School in the fall. Gaunt has studied piano for seven years under the guidance of Monty Hines; he is currently mastering Gershwin’s Piano Prelude I. During his time with the academy he has studied under Dr. Henry Bauer. Outside of piano, Gaunt loves playing golf, attending youth group, playing games, reading, camping, and spending time with friends and family. He is the oldest of six children and loves playing with his younger siblings in his free time.
Clark Allred, 13, is in the eighth grade at Chase Middle School, where he plays flute in advanced band and piano in Jazz band.
Allred been playing piano for eight years with various teachers, but is currently studying with Teresa Birch. He developed a love for piano from an early age with his discovery of movie and video game music on Musescore.com, and is particularly talented at sight reading, improvisation, and memorization. He began studying organ with Kent Brocklebank one year ago and is serving at church as a ward organist. His Organ Academy teacher is Dr. Janet Ahrend.
Allred enjoys spending time with friends, camping and hiking with his youth group at church, cooking, reading, and playing computer games with his four siblings.
Leadership
Janet Ahrend, DMA, academy teacher and chair, holds a Bachelor of Music Degree in Organ from the University of Idaho, and Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts Degrees in Organ from the University of Washington. She received further training at the Royal School of Church Music in England.
Ahrend has served as guest instructor for the Royal School of Church Music Summer School held in Perth, Western Australia. She is on the faculties of Gonzaga University, Whitworth University, and Eastern Washington University as Adjunct Instructor of Organ. Ahrend has served as co-dean of the American Guild of Organists-Spokane Chapter, and is currently chair of the chapter’s Organ Academy, an educational outreach program for young students ten to twenty years of age. She is a member of the PEO Sisterhood.
From 1990 to 1993, Ahrend served on the hymnal committee for the United Church of Christ, helping to produce the New Century Hymnal. She has spent her life working in churches, serving as organist for Methodist, Congregational, Roman Catholic, and Episcopal congregations. From 1997-2014, she was organist-choirmaster for the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Spokane, Washington, where she also directed the handbell choir. She maintains a private piano and organ studio in her home.
Ahrend was ordained pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church in Spokane, Wash., in May, 2019.
Henry Bauer, DMA, academy teacher, is the Director of Music at The Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes in Spokane, Wash., where he conducts the Schola Cantorum, Cathedral Choir, and Diocesan Choir as well as being Artistic Director of the Sacred Music Series. He has served as a Director of Music and Liturgy in parishes in the Archdiocese of Washington. He holds a doctorate in Sacred Music and choral conducting along with masters in liturgical music and organ from The Catholic University of America. His doctoral dissertation is on choral literature for the liturgical year. Outside of his professional music ministry career, Bauer has held several leadership positions for NPM throughout the years.
Bauer is the current chair of the Director of Music Ministries (DMM) Forum, was a member of the board of the Director of Music Ministries Division (DMM), and chair of the Partner Certification Review Committee for Lay Ecclesial Ministry. He continues to coordinate the Choral Anthem Project and leads reading sessions on choral music. He has presented workshops for cantors and organists, lectures on the role of music and musicians in the liturgy, and choral rehearsal techniques. Bauer has served as a Core Committee member for two national conventions and been the Chapter Director and Treasurer for the Washington DC Chapter. He has led several choir tours to Europe. When not teaching, doing pastoral work, Henry enjoys traveling and doing home renovations. Bauer is an officer of the AGO – Spokane Chapter.
Joseph Schubert, PhD, academy teacher, retired from teaching in 2020, with a career that began with two years of teaching third grade, and 36 subsequent years of teaching choral music in public schools at junior high, high school, and university levels. From 2009 through 2023, Schubert also taught music theory/style analysis, choral literature, and academic research and writing in the “Three Summer Master of Music in Choral Conducting” program at California State University, Los Angeles. Schubert’s dissertation dealt with twentieth-century French organist Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, providing an extensive biography and a comprehensive analysis of Grunenwald’s solo organ works in the context of the twentieth-century French organ school.
He has maintained a parallel career as a church organist and music director since 1975. He currently serves as interim organist for Saint Augustine Catholic Church, Spokane. Schubert is an officer of the AGO – Spokane Chapter.
Music and support for the arts has always been an important part of academy chair Carolyn Payne’s life. Her motto, “We can do this!” has resulted in some projects which have opened opportunities for significant things to happen. The Spokane AGO’s Organ Academy is just one. Responding in the 1960s to a Crusade for Strings project of the National Federation of Music Clubs, she worked to re-establish string instruction in the public schools in Caldwell, Idaho. After moving to Spokane, she was president of the Spokane Youth Symphony.
Payne has been a Lutheran church organist/choir director for over 70 years. She played cello in the College of Idaho-Community Orchestra for 25 years and taught piano and cello students. Musical organizations she belongs to are the American Guild of Organists, Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, and Friday Musical. She has served as chairman of Pipe Organ Encounter (POE), Regional AGO Convention co-chairman and three terms as dean of the AGO – Spokane Chapter.
In 1975, she and her husband Frank helped sponsor Vietnamese refugees who have become like family to them. This has led to involvement with Lutheran Community Service. She served as president of the National Kidney Foundation of Washington—one of her daughters has survived a kidney transplant for 54 years. She worked as office manager for Ernst and Payne, Inc., commercial construction company for 20 years, which she and her husband owned and operated. And they are loving parents of seven children.
Street Team Assets
Chapter members:
- Print/place posters in your choir room or studio
- Place posters wherever lovers of organ music might see them
- Share images on social media
- Include promo images in your Sunday service leaflet or congregation newsletter
- Insert half-page fliers in your service leaflet
Here are links for downloading image assets you can use! Print directly from your computer’s image viewer or post on your social media page.
Print Posters & Fliers
- Poster (8.5×11)
- Half-page fliers
- Poster (11×17)
Social Media – all sized for optimum display
- Facebook Cover (1200×674)
- Facebook Event (1200×628)
- Pinterest (1000×1500)
- Instagram Square (1080×1080)
- Instagram Landscape (1080×566)
- Instagram Portrait (1080×1350)
- X (Twitter) Image (1200×675)
- LinkedIn (1200×1200)
- LinkedIn (1080×1350)
Press release