An organ virtuoso, she was the first American woman to play the complete works of French composer Olivier Messiaen. Organist Gail Archer returns to the Mediterranean Festival . She will perform Wednesday at 9 p.m. in the Cathedral of Santa Maria in Alghero, in a free concert as part of the event curated by the Arte in Musica Association and under the artistic direction of Maestro Ugo Spanu.
Archer lives and works in New York, where she teaches professional practice at Barnard College of Columbia University, directs the Barnard-Columbia Chorus and the Chamber Singers, and is on the faculty of the Harriman Institute. She is also the founder of Musforum, an international forum for women organists, and is organist at Vassar College, a prestigious institution founded in 1861 and one of the historic Seven Sisters, the first elite women's colleges in the United States.
The concert program will open with Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 548, and An Wasserflussen Babylon, BWV 653, before moving on to German Romanticism with Schumann's Fugue sopra BACH, Op. 60, No. 5, and Brahms's Mein Jesu, der du mich, Op. 122, No. 1. The musical journey will then continue with Radosveta Hurkova's Variations on the song "Polegnala e Tudora ," Bozhidar Abrashev's Prelude for Organ , Evgeny Tcheshmedjiev's Two Frescoes , Nadia Boulanger's triptych of Prelude , Petit Canon , and Improvisation , and the concluding Te Deum by Jeanne Demessieux.
