DONALD SUTHERLAND

Program Biography

    A graduate of Syracuse University where he was a student of Arthur Poister, Donald Sutherland is a member of the organ faculty at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. As solo artist, teacher, church musician, and accompanist for his wife, soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson, he has an active schedule in the US as well as in Europe. He is organist/harpsichordist with the Theater Chamber Players of the Kennedy Center, and has played with numerous chamber ensembles and orchestras. Mr. Sutherland has made frequent radio broadcasts for NPR, the BBC in London, Austria's ORTF, as well as recordings for CRI and Gothic. For 28 years, until his retirement in 1999, he was Director of Music Ministries at Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland.

    Donald Sutherland and Phyllis Bryn-Julson have performed together throughout the US and in Europe, including the Theatre del'Athenee of Paris, France. In France, Mr. Sutherland also appeared at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, performing a program which included the European premiere of Olly Wilson's "Expansions." He has taught and performed for several summer organ academies, among them the Oundle International Organ Week, Westmisnter Choir College, St. Dunstan’s College Conference (Newport RI), and the Summer Institute of Church Musicin Ontario. He has been a featured artist for the Bath International Festival, the "Art of the Organ" Festival in Vienna, and for the first Soviet-American International Organ Festival in Aachen, Germany, where he was one of two Americans to perform.

    The Sutherlands have teamed up for workshops at the University of Kansas, regional American Guild of Organists conventions in Syracuse, Buffalo and Pittsburgh, and at the Hartt Contemporary Organ Festivals in Hartford.