music

Parish Choir
The Good Shepherd Parish Choir is a small, well-balanced, and carefully trained ensemble dedicated to enhancing our community liturgies through hymns, anthems, and other service music. The choristers include both professional and dedicated avocational musicians. New members are always welcome, including young women in high school and young men with changed voices. While previous choral experience is always helpful, all that is absolutely necessary is the ability to sing in tune, a basic level of music reading, and the desire to work cooperatively with this lively and committed group. New singers are asked for a nine-month commitment to attend choir each week except when ill or out of town.

Service and Rehearsal Times
The choir sings at the 10:00 a.m. Sunday Sung Eucharist each week except during late June, July and August, as well as at special services on holy days and at several services of Choral Evensong and Benediction throughout the year. Rehearsals are held at 8:45 a.m. each Sunday, with special rehearsals for Christmas and Holy Week.

Music List
The Good Shepherd Choir leads the parish in hymns, psalms, and other settings of the liturgy, and sings a wide variety of important works from the Anglican choral tradition. The choir’s repertory ranges from plainsong to newly composed works and from short motets and carols to large-scale anthems with organ and other instruments.

Music Staff
The Organist-Choirmaster at Good Shepherd is Carl Klein, who joined the parish in September, 1999. In addition to a valued mix of accomplished amateur musicians, the choir includes a number of professional singers(*).

Current Choir Members
John-Paul Cardoso
Chip Coakley
Loring Conant
Brian De Lorenzo
Charles Foster
Carol Millard
Brad Peloquin
Mary Robinson
Terry Robinson
Ulysses Thomas
Craig Snyder
Andrea Wivchar

Good Shepherd is always looking for qualified singers. If you are interested in membership in the choir, please contact Dr. Klein at 617-244-4028.

The Organ
The parish organ was built by Peter Collins of Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire (England) and dedicated on Pentecost 1995. A small, two-manual mechanical action instrument, it incorporates elements of eighteenth-century British organs, but was designed also to accompany a full range of choral and congregational music and successfully to play a wide variety of organ literature.

The Collins Organ
In Spring 1995, Good Shepherd Parish became the home of the first organ in North America built by the distinguished British organ builder Peter Collins. The choice of this organ was the result of two years’ work by the Organ Committee, and included expert consultation with organ historian Barbara Owen, and a study trip to Britain by then Organist-Choirmaster, Daniel Page. The Good Shepherd organ has a non-identical twin located in the music studio of Mr. Kenneth Ryder, Organist of the Parish Church of Saint Peter Mancroft, Norwich (England), in his house in the Close of Norwich Cathedral. Designed primarily for teaching and practice, it shares the same basic case and action design with Good Shepherd’s instrument.

Past Organs at Good Shepherd
The parish’s original organ, a two-manual instrument possibly by the Estey company of Brattleboro, Vermont, served until 1954, when it was replaced by an electronic organ. In the 1970s parts from several dismantled pipe organs were combined by local organ builders to form a five-stop instrument located in a specially-built shelf at the rear of the church and played from a console in the chancel. Never considered adequate either visually or musically, this organ remained in place through Easter 1995 and was sold for parts in preparation for the installation of the Collins organ.

Collins Organ Specification
Manual I
Manual II
Pedal Gedeckt 8’
Chimney Flute 8’
Bourdon 16’
Spindle Flute 4’
Dulciana 8’
Doublete 2’
Principal 4’
Sesquialtera II
Fifteenth 2’

suspended action to Manual II, backfall action to Manual I