Sunday, October 12, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Nathaniel Gumbs
(New York, NY)
Nathaniel Gumbs
(New York, NY)
PROGRAM
Alfred Hollins (1865-1942)
Concert Ouverture in C Minor
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Andante in D
César Franck (1822-1890)
Chorale No. 1
William Bolcom (b. 1938)
What A Friend We Have in Jesus!
Raymond Haan (b. 1938)
My Lord, What a Morning
Carl Haywood (b. 1941)
Spirit Fantasy
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Retrospection
Felix Mendelssohn
Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 65
i. Allegro
ii. Adagio
iii. Andante recitativo
iv. Allegro assai vivace
Alfred Hollins (1865-1942)
Concert Ouverture in C Minor
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Andante in D
César Franck (1822-1890)
Chorale No. 1
William Bolcom (b. 1938)
What A Friend We Have in Jesus!
Raymond Haan (b. 1938)
My Lord, What a Morning
Carl Haywood (b. 1941)
Spirit Fantasy
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Retrospection
Felix Mendelssohn
Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 65
i. Allegro
ii. Adagio
iii. Andante recitativo
iv. Allegro assai vivace
Nathaniel Gumbs is a native of the Bronx, NY and has performed throughout the United States and abroad, including Antigua, St. Thomas, Ghana, Paris, and Munich, and is consistently gathering new fans and followers. In a review of a recorded performance with bass-baritone Dashon Burton, The New York Times described Nathaniel’s playing as “mature, lyrical, accurate and energetic,” and that his performance was presented “deftly and with feeling.”
Dr. Gumbs currently serves as Director of Music at The Riverside Church in New York City. He earned his undergraduate degree from Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia, his Master of Music degree from Yale University, and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music. Nathaniel’s principal teachers include Steven Cooksey, David Higgs, and Martin Jean.
Prior to his position at The Riverside Church, Nathaniel served as Director of Chapel Music at Yale University where he worked with students, faculty, and guests to coordinate music for three worshiping communities: the University Church in Battell Chapel, the Yale Divinity School community, and the Berkeley Divinity School community, the latter two communities both worshiping in Marquand Chapel. He also served previously as Interim Minister of Music and Fine Arts at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, NY, and as Director of Music and Arts and Church Organist at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC, where he led several hundred volunteer musicians and staff in four choirs and other ensembles.
Nathaniel maintains a vibrant career as a concert organist, managed by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc. He is also featured on various recording projects through GIA publications with Dr. James Abbington, choral projects with award-winning conductor Dr. Jason Max Ferdinand, and recordings of revised choral works by Margaret Bonds with NY Philharmonic's Chorus Director, Dr. Malcolm Merriweather. Nathaniel is a contributing composer in Pulling Out The Stops, Volume 3, Congregational Song Accompaniments for Organ, published by Augsburg Fortress. Most recently, he released his first organ solo project entitled King of Kings: Organ Music of Black Composers, Past and Present.
Dr. Gumbs currently serves as Director of Music at The Riverside Church in New York City. He earned his undergraduate degree from Shenandoah Conservatory in Virginia, his Master of Music degree from Yale University, and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music. Nathaniel’s principal teachers include Steven Cooksey, David Higgs, and Martin Jean.
Prior to his position at The Riverside Church, Nathaniel served as Director of Chapel Music at Yale University where he worked with students, faculty, and guests to coordinate music for three worshiping communities: the University Church in Battell Chapel, the Yale Divinity School community, and the Berkeley Divinity School community, the latter two communities both worshiping in Marquand Chapel. He also served previously as Interim Minister of Music and Fine Arts at the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, NY, and as Director of Music and Arts and Church Organist at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC, where he led several hundred volunteer musicians and staff in four choirs and other ensembles.
Nathaniel maintains a vibrant career as a concert organist, managed by Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc. He is also featured on various recording projects through GIA publications with Dr. James Abbington, choral projects with award-winning conductor Dr. Jason Max Ferdinand, and recordings of revised choral works by Margaret Bonds with NY Philharmonic's Chorus Director, Dr. Malcolm Merriweather. Nathaniel is a contributing composer in Pulling Out The Stops, Volume 3, Congregational Song Accompaniments for Organ, published by Augsburg Fortress. Most recently, he released his first organ solo project entitled King of Kings: Organ Music of Black Composers, Past and Present.
Program Notes
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
Blind from birth, Alfred Hollins manifested perfect pitch at age two with the ability to name any combination of notes struck on the piano. At age 14, he performed Beethoven's Emperor Concerto at the Crystal Palace. Upon completing his musical training in England, Hollins went to Berlin to study piano with Hans von Bülow. As early as 1888, he was performing as a pianist with the orchestras of New York and Boston; as a concert organist, he performed across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States, as well as giving solo performances for Queen Victoria. In 1897, he left London to become the organist at St. George's in Edinburgh for 45 years. Throughout his lifetime, his music was frequently performed by his contemporaries; however, it fell out of vogue shortly after his death (but is now beginning to reappear). His vigorous and eclectic Concert Overture in C Minor was composed during the "glory days" of the Victorian era at a time when the theater style was also starting to develop. It was published in 1899 as the second of his three concert overtures, which he used as grand openings for his recitals. Redolent of Brahms or Elgar, it reveals his ability to write "orchestral" music for the organ. After a short introduction, the stirring and optimistic first theme enters, punctuated with a great deal of swing. The quiet second theme, in contrast, is sentimental and melodious. It is succeeded by a fugal episode built on a decisive subject and a well-knit development of the various themes. A recapitulation of the opening section rounds out the work, which concludes with a virile climax.
Mendelssohn grew up in Berlin as the son of a banker in materially and intellectually privileged circumstances. He was not well-known as an organist until he visited England for the first time in 1829. He returned nine times in the following eighteen years and played numerous organ recitals. During his eighth visit in 1844 he was requested by the publishers Coventry & Hollier to compose some organ music. He began work immediately and completed a set of six organ sonatas comprising 19 movements drawn from a total of 29 he composed from July 1844 to April 1845. One of the movements, Andante with Variations in D Minor, was originally intended for use in the Fifth Sonata; however, Mendelssohn ultimately removed it to shorten the sonata. It is a set of four variations based on an original melody in song form (ABA) with no real breaks between the variations.
Composed in 1890, the Trois Chorals were César Franck's last works–the pinnacle of his compositional output and some of the finest ever composed for the organ. Franck composed them within two months as he convalesced from an accident during his summer vacation at the home of his wife’s cousin in Nemours. Sadly, Franck died November 8 and was unable to hear these works performed or supervise their publication. He completed Choral No. 1 in E Major on August 7 and described it as a “chorale with a lot of fantasy.” Considered the most opulent of the three chorales (Dupré even orchestrated it), the piece paints a cyclical fresco in multiple sections. To begin, six-part harmonizations of all the work’s motifs appear in dialogue between the Great and the Swell, including the main chorale theme on the characteristic Voix Humaine stop. The ensuing two variations, which constitute the main body of the composition, are based on these motifs. In the first variation, marked Cantabile, the motifs sound in the treble on the Swell trumpet, accompanied by sixteenth notes, and then pass to the tenor. A surprising interruption on the Grand Chœur introduces a transition built on two ideas, one homophonic and the other more decorative. Next, the much more complex second variation serves as a development section. Here, Franck modulates through the harmonic spectrum with breathtaking fluency, all the while splitting off individual motifs and combining them with each other. An animated transition with triplets leads to the triumphant tonic-key return of the entire chorale theme harmonized on high-lying tutta forza chords.
Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning mainstream composer William Bolcom is a native of Seattle. He studied with such luminaries as Darius Milhaud at Mills College and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1964, he received the first Doctor of Musical Arts degree conferred by Stanford University and later taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 until 2008. His music seeks to erase boundaries between popular music and art music and has been described as a “juxtaposition of normally incompatible materials.” His magnum opus for the organ is twelve virtuosic Gospel Preludes. Based on the familiar Baptist hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus was commissioned by the Dallas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists in 1979. In it Bolcom utilizes jazzy harmonies and swinging rhythms characteristic of the gospel style and even incorporates elements of ragtime and Hammond organ playing!
Concurrent with his career as a middle and high school English teacher, lifelong Michigander Raymond Haan was appointed in 1960 as Director of Music and Organist at Cutlerville East Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, where he served for more than fifty years. He graduated from Calvin College and the University of Michigan and has composed more than 500 works for organ, voice, choir, handbells, piano, and other instruments. My Lord, What a Morning is the second of his Three Spirituals written in memory of his parents and published in 1994. Haan masterfully depicts this Negro Spiritual, which describes the awe and dread of the end times, when trumpet sounds will wake the dead, stars will fall from the sky, and Jesus will return. After a brooding introduction, the refrain begins in the tenor followed by the verse in the treble. The final refrain crescendos to full organ followed by a pianissimo coda.
Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, Carl W. Haywood is a cum laude graduate of Norfolk State University, where he subsequently taught for 42 years, retiring in 2016. In addition, Dr. Haywood served as Organist/Choir Director at Grace Episcopal Church in Norfolk for 26 years. His Spirit Fantasy dates from 2021 and is dedicated to tonight’s organist. It is based on the celebrated Negro Spiritual “Every Time I Feel the Spirit.” Filled with evolving energy, it ultimately modulates up a half step and culminates in a fiery finale.
Florence Beatrice Price was the first African-American woman composer to be successful in classical music. She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to Dr. James H. Smith, the first black dentist in the city, and Florence Gulliver, an elementary school teacher who gave Florence her first music lessons. Following her graduation from the New England Conservatory in piano and organ, she returned to Arkansas and married Thomas Price, a lawyer. After a particularly brutal lynching in their middle-class neighborhood, the Price family moved to Chicago in 1926, where Florence’s musical career blossomed. She composed over 300 works and in them frequently used Negro Spirituals (or similar themes) and jazz harmonies and rhythms. Originally titled “An Elf on a Moonbeam,” Retrospection is a picturesque miniature dating from 1942. The atmospheric middle section is particularly vivid in portraying the elf frolicking freely. The title was presumably changed at the time of publication to be more “church-friendly.” The melody is basically pentatonic, like most folk songs and Negro Spirituals.
As explained above, Mendelssohn did not use traditional sonata-allegro form in his six organ sonatas; instead, they comprise individual movements grouped together. The sonatas are crucial in the history of organ music, not only as a cusp between the Classical and Romantic aesthetic, but also as a stimulus in the development of organ composition for the rest of the century. Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor has been called the first organ symphony of the 19th century and is organized into four movements. The first movement skillfully imagines an unprecedented duality that vacillates between an organist playing in one space of a church and a choir singing in an adjoining space. After a martial ten-bar introduction, thus begins the fugal “organ” theme being interrupted by each phrase of the secondary “choral” theme, Was mein Gott will, das g'scheh allzeit [What my God wills always happens]. This Lutheran chorale was familiar to Mendelssohn from Bach’s use of it in the St. Matthew Passion. Mendelssohn then reverses the fugue subject and a stretto releases an unrestrained pedal line that leads to a chordal coda. The second movement in ABA form is an elegant Adagio in A-flat major with a suave accompanied melody presented in a dialogue between two manuals. The brief transitional third movement returns to the main key and employs the contrast of loud and soft registrations, as heard in the first movement. It is marked by declamatory cadences moving seamlessly into the brilliant final movement–a dazzling arpeggiated toccata in F major interlaced with a contrasting hymn-like melody, chromatic passages, showy pedal runs, and an impressive coda in stretto.
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
Blind from birth, Alfred Hollins manifested perfect pitch at age two with the ability to name any combination of notes struck on the piano. At age 14, he performed Beethoven's Emperor Concerto at the Crystal Palace. Upon completing his musical training in England, Hollins went to Berlin to study piano with Hans von Bülow. As early as 1888, he was performing as a pianist with the orchestras of New York and Boston; as a concert organist, he performed across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States, as well as giving solo performances for Queen Victoria. In 1897, he left London to become the organist at St. George's in Edinburgh for 45 years. Throughout his lifetime, his music was frequently performed by his contemporaries; however, it fell out of vogue shortly after his death (but is now beginning to reappear). His vigorous and eclectic Concert Overture in C Minor was composed during the "glory days" of the Victorian era at a time when the theater style was also starting to develop. It was published in 1899 as the second of his three concert overtures, which he used as grand openings for his recitals. Redolent of Brahms or Elgar, it reveals his ability to write "orchestral" music for the organ. After a short introduction, the stirring and optimistic first theme enters, punctuated with a great deal of swing. The quiet second theme, in contrast, is sentimental and melodious. It is succeeded by a fugal episode built on a decisive subject and a well-knit development of the various themes. A recapitulation of the opening section rounds out the work, which concludes with a virile climax.
Mendelssohn grew up in Berlin as the son of a banker in materially and intellectually privileged circumstances. He was not well-known as an organist until he visited England for the first time in 1829. He returned nine times in the following eighteen years and played numerous organ recitals. During his eighth visit in 1844 he was requested by the publishers Coventry & Hollier to compose some organ music. He began work immediately and completed a set of six organ sonatas comprising 19 movements drawn from a total of 29 he composed from July 1844 to April 1845. One of the movements, Andante with Variations in D Minor, was originally intended for use in the Fifth Sonata; however, Mendelssohn ultimately removed it to shorten the sonata. It is a set of four variations based on an original melody in song form (ABA) with no real breaks between the variations.
Composed in 1890, the Trois Chorals were César Franck's last works–the pinnacle of his compositional output and some of the finest ever composed for the organ. Franck composed them within two months as he convalesced from an accident during his summer vacation at the home of his wife’s cousin in Nemours. Sadly, Franck died November 8 and was unable to hear these works performed or supervise their publication. He completed Choral No. 1 in E Major on August 7 and described it as a “chorale with a lot of fantasy.” Considered the most opulent of the three chorales (Dupré even orchestrated it), the piece paints a cyclical fresco in multiple sections. To begin, six-part harmonizations of all the work’s motifs appear in dialogue between the Great and the Swell, including the main chorale theme on the characteristic Voix Humaine stop. The ensuing two variations, which constitute the main body of the composition, are based on these motifs. In the first variation, marked Cantabile, the motifs sound in the treble on the Swell trumpet, accompanied by sixteenth notes, and then pass to the tenor. A surprising interruption on the Grand Chœur introduces a transition built on two ideas, one homophonic and the other more decorative. Next, the much more complex second variation serves as a development section. Here, Franck modulates through the harmonic spectrum with breathtaking fluency, all the while splitting off individual motifs and combining them with each other. An animated transition with triplets leads to the triumphant tonic-key return of the entire chorale theme harmonized on high-lying tutta forza chords.
Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning mainstream composer William Bolcom is a native of Seattle. He studied with such luminaries as Darius Milhaud at Mills College and Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1964, he received the first Doctor of Musical Arts degree conferred by Stanford University and later taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973 until 2008. His music seeks to erase boundaries between popular music and art music and has been described as a “juxtaposition of normally incompatible materials.” His magnum opus for the organ is twelve virtuosic Gospel Preludes. Based on the familiar Baptist hymn, What a Friend We Have in Jesus was commissioned by the Dallas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists in 1979. In it Bolcom utilizes jazzy harmonies and swinging rhythms characteristic of the gospel style and even incorporates elements of ragtime and Hammond organ playing!
Concurrent with his career as a middle and high school English teacher, lifelong Michigander Raymond Haan was appointed in 1960 as Director of Music and Organist at Cutlerville East Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, where he served for more than fifty years. He graduated from Calvin College and the University of Michigan and has composed more than 500 works for organ, voice, choir, handbells, piano, and other instruments. My Lord, What a Morning is the second of his Three Spirituals written in memory of his parents and published in 1994. Haan masterfully depicts this Negro Spiritual, which describes the awe and dread of the end times, when trumpet sounds will wake the dead, stars will fall from the sky, and Jesus will return. After a brooding introduction, the refrain begins in the tenor followed by the verse in the treble. The final refrain crescendos to full organ followed by a pianissimo coda.
Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, Carl W. Haywood is a cum laude graduate of Norfolk State University, where he subsequently taught for 42 years, retiring in 2016. In addition, Dr. Haywood served as Organist/Choir Director at Grace Episcopal Church in Norfolk for 26 years. His Spirit Fantasy dates from 2021 and is dedicated to tonight’s organist. It is based on the celebrated Negro Spiritual “Every Time I Feel the Spirit.” Filled with evolving energy, it ultimately modulates up a half step and culminates in a fiery finale.
Florence Beatrice Price was the first African-American woman composer to be successful in classical music. She was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to Dr. James H. Smith, the first black dentist in the city, and Florence Gulliver, an elementary school teacher who gave Florence her first music lessons. Following her graduation from the New England Conservatory in piano and organ, she returned to Arkansas and married Thomas Price, a lawyer. After a particularly brutal lynching in their middle-class neighborhood, the Price family moved to Chicago in 1926, where Florence’s musical career blossomed. She composed over 300 works and in them frequently used Negro Spirituals (or similar themes) and jazz harmonies and rhythms. Originally titled “An Elf on a Moonbeam,” Retrospection is a picturesque miniature dating from 1942. The atmospheric middle section is particularly vivid in portraying the elf frolicking freely. The title was presumably changed at the time of publication to be more “church-friendly.” The melody is basically pentatonic, like most folk songs and Negro Spirituals.
As explained above, Mendelssohn did not use traditional sonata-allegro form in his six organ sonatas; instead, they comprise individual movements grouped together. The sonatas are crucial in the history of organ music, not only as a cusp between the Classical and Romantic aesthetic, but also as a stimulus in the development of organ composition for the rest of the century. Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 1 in F Minor has been called the first organ symphony of the 19th century and is organized into four movements. The first movement skillfully imagines an unprecedented duality that vacillates between an organist playing in one space of a church and a choir singing in an adjoining space. After a martial ten-bar introduction, thus begins the fugal “organ” theme being interrupted by each phrase of the secondary “choral” theme, Was mein Gott will, das g'scheh allzeit [What my God wills always happens]. This Lutheran chorale was familiar to Mendelssohn from Bach’s use of it in the St. Matthew Passion. Mendelssohn then reverses the fugue subject and a stretto releases an unrestrained pedal line that leads to a chordal coda. The second movement in ABA form is an elegant Adagio in A-flat major with a suave accompanied melody presented in a dialogue between two manuals. The brief transitional third movement returns to the main key and employs the contrast of loud and soft registrations, as heard in the first movement. It is marked by declamatory cadences moving seamlessly into the brilliant final movement–a dazzling arpeggiated toccata in F major interlaced with a contrasting hymn-like melody, chromatic passages, showy pedal runs, and an impressive coda in stretto.
