Organist Clara Gerdes Will Make Her Debut in Ocean Grove This Week

As part of its ongoing free organ recital series, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting will present CLARA GERDES on Wednesday, August 11 at 7 PM, who will perform on the historic Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove, NJ.

This is a free recital. The Great Auditorium is located at Pilgrim and Ocean Pathways in Ocean Grove, NJ. For more information visit https://www.oceangrove.org/organ.

Ms. Gerdes will perform works by William Walton, Maurice Durufle, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Max Reger, Gaston Litaize, and Franz Liszt.

Ms. Gerdes is a 2021 graduate of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music where she studies with Martin Jean. She recently graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Alan Morrison. She received first prizes in the Albert Schweitzer, AGO-Quimby Mid-Atlantic Regional and UNCSA School of the Arts organ competitions; was the recipient of the 2020 Baker Prize in Organ Performance and the 2021 Julia Sherman Award for Excellence in Organ Playing from Yale; and received the first annual AGO Pogorzelski-Yankee scholarship. She has performed around the United States, including at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York and Washington National Cathedral, the American Guild of Organists 2018 National Convention in Kansas City, and at Spoleto, Oregon Bach Festival, Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts and most recently the Uncommon Music Festival in Sitka, Alaska. Pre-Covid, Clara served as Assistant Organist at Saint Bartholomew's Church, Park Avenue in New York City and was previously Organ Scholar at Saint Mark's Church, Locust Street in Philadelphia. She now serves as Director of Music at Most Holy Redeemer and Nativity Parish in Manhattan, New York, where her responsibilities include building up the parish's music program and overseeing the restoration of its 1891 Roosevelt organ.