John A. Wolfe

John A. Wolfe is a New York City-based organist, choral conductor, and music educator.  Mr. Wolfe’s performance credits span all five boroughs of New York City and included 134 public performances in 2012, with such highlights as a series of recitals celebrating the organ music of J.S. Bach, the 75th anniversary ceremony of Queens College, and the Queens College ceremony honoring Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.  He has been a featured performer in the Prism Concert Series at Central Synagogue in Manhattan and in T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral at Saint Joseph’s Church of Our Lord in Brooklyn, which earned favorable reviews in the New York Times and Time Out New York.  In Winter 2013, his performance of J.S. Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor,” BWV 565 appeared in the film Fugue by Dorian Carli-Jones.  In all of his musical endeavors, Mr. Wolfe strives to meld carefully researched and historically authentic interpretive practices with deeply felt emotion and spirituality.

Mr. Wolfe is the Organist and Minister of Music at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Christ in Rosedale, Queens, where he leads the chancel and youth choirs and works closely with Bishop Aubrey Bougher to select and perform music for worship throughout the church year.  As an active member of his community and his faith, Mr. Wolfe served pro bono as the Choir Director at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Coney Island from October 2011 to October 2012, and he has performed pro bono at the Senior Center at Sunnyside Community Services in Queens.

Mr. Wolfe is a winner of the Harold R. Hunt Memorial Scholarship Competition, a scholarship recipient from the Aaron Copland School of Music Organ Fund, an Executive Board member of the American Guild of Organists Brooklyn Chapter, and a member of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians.  He is a native of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and an Honors graduate of Gettysburg Area High School and Vassar College.  He studied organ performance and music theory with David Erickson and Dexter Weikel in Gettysburg, and he has continued to study with Merrelyn Gallagher, at Vassar; Jan Steyer, at New York University in the Czech Republic; and Dr. Gail Archer.   He is currently a candidate for the Masters’ Degree in Organ Performance at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College, under the tutelage of Professor Walter Klauss.  He lives in Sunnyside, Queens.