Janette Fishell

Biography

Janette Fishell holds degrees in organ performance from Indiana University and Northwestern University; her teachers include Wilma Jensen, Wolfgang Rübsam, Richard Enright, Anita Werling, Robert Byrd and Clyde Holloway with further coaching on Baroque and German Romantic repertoire with Ludger Lohmann. Named Young Organist of the Year by Keyboard Arts, Inc. while still an undergraduate, Dr. Fishell is a recitalist and teacher of international standing. She has performed in many of the world’s greatest concert venues including Suntory Hall, Tokyo; King’s College, Cambridge; Berlin’s Schauspielhaus; the Liszt Academy, Budapest; the Prague Spring Festival; and has been a featured recitalist and lecturer at five national conventions and five regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. Her solo recitals for the 2006 national convention of the AGO in Chicago were critically acclaimed as “flawless” and a convention highlight. The author of numerous articles and a book on service playing published by Abingdon Press, she is widely recognized as a leading authority on the organ music of Czech composer Petr Eben.

Her numerous compact disc recordings include performances of the music of Marcel Dupré, Petr Eben and J.S. Bach as well as duet literature performed with her husband, British organist Colin Andrews. Pas de Dieu: Music Sublime and Spirited, a recording of French Romantic repertoire and the world premiere of Frank Ferko’s Livre d’Orgue, was released by Loft Recordings in July, 2006, the premiere recording on C. B. Fisk Opus 126. She has been featured in live radio broadcasts worldwide, including live recital broadcasts for the BBC from St. Marylebone Church, London, NHK, Tokyo, and Czech Radio. A frequent adjudicator, she has been tutor and artist three times at the Oundle International School for Young Organists, and was a judge for the recorded round of the 2000 National Competition for Young Artists sponsored by the American Guild of Organists. She served as Chair of the NYACOP committee from 2004 through 2006.

Dr. Fishell is Professor of Organ at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, where she teaches applied organ and courses in the church music curriculum. From 1989 through 2008 she headed the Organ Performance and Sacred Music degree programs at East Carolina University, and was Director of Music/Principal Organist at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, NC, where she oversaw a full schedule of choral services and led the choir on two successful English Cathedral Choral Residencies and the recording of a critically acclaimed compact disc.

Her students have distinguished themselves in academia and the performance stage including first place honors in the AGO Competition for Young Organists, the MTNA National Collegiate Organ Competition and at the Oundle International Summer School for Young Organists. Her former students successfully serve in churches and on university faculties throughout the US and Asia. Dr. Fishell’s commitment to the creation and sustenance of excellence and creativity in organ performance and sacred music has led to a variety of projects: she founded the East Carolina Religious Arts Festival, and was pivotal in the design and fundraising for the C. B. Fisk opus 126 pipe organ that functions both as the organ for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Greenville, NC, and the major teaching and performance instrument for East Carolina University School of Music. She has received numerous commissions for choral compositions and hymn tunes, some of which feature on the Love Bade Me Welcome: Music from St. Paul’s, and is a regular contributor to professional journals, a participant on panels and an active lecturer and adjudicator.

Most recent and upcoming engagements include multiple concert tours of Asia and Europe, including recitals at the Beijing National Center of the Performing Arts, Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, Sydney Town Hall, Lilia Hall, St. Petersburg (Russia) Philharmonic, and Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. Among her domestic engagements during 2008-2009 are performances and teaching residencies at the Charlotte, NC RSCM choral training course, Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, Benaroya Symphony Hall, Seattle, Adolphus Busch Hall, Harvard University and recitals at Region III and Region V Conventions of the American Guild of Organists. In the United States she performs under the management of Karen McFarlane Artists.

Updated May 2008