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Ryan Jackson � Organ

Ryan Jackson is a native of Bracebridge, Ontario, where he began to study piano at an early age and took up the organ at seventeen. Ryan has been the winner of three major Canadian competitions: the National Organ Playing Competition (sponsored by the Royal Canadian College of Organists), the Florence and Stanley Osborne National Organ Playing Competition, and the Regional Young Organists Competition (sponsored by the Toronto Centre of the RCCO). He was also one of two prizewinners at the 2008 Fort Wayne National Organ Playing Competition in Indiana, USA. Ryan was appointed Director of Music and Fine Arts Ministries at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in June 2012, following an international search that considered over two hundred applicants.
Prior to his appointment at FAPC, Ryan was the Associate Organist and Conductor at Christ Church United Methodist on Park Avenue where he played the organ and directed the Parish Choir, a non-professionalensemble which he established in 2010 to increase opportunities for participation in the music program.


Recognized for his "mature musicality, technical poise, and registrational sensitivity" (RCCO Bulletin), Ryan has performed concerts throughout Canada and the United States in such series as Montréal’s Festival orgue et couleurs, Toronto’s Fridays @ Eight, Edmonton’s Sundays at 3, and New York’s Music on Madison. Ryan has been a featured recitalist at two national conventions of the RCCO, and has also been interviewed and broadcast on CBC Radio One as co-founder of Toronto’s hit recital series, Ghosts of Metropolitan. During the 09/10 concert season, Ryan twice performed the complete organ works of Maurice Duruflé, first at Metropolitan United Church in Toronto, and then again in New York at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Times Square.
Ryan holds the Master of Music degree in organ performance from Yale University where he studied with Thomas Murray. In addition to the full-tuition scholarship given to all music students, Ryan received the Robert Baker Stipend, which is awarded to an incoming student deemed to be among the top one or two percent of young organists in the country. As the University Church Organist, Ryan was an integral part of a diverse program of arts in worship overseen by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.


Ryan completed his undergraduate studies in the performance program atthe University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music as a student of Dr. Patricia Wright. While at Toronto, Ryan was the recipient of numerous awards, and was the inaugural recipient of the Tecumseh Sherman Rogers Graduating Award, a grant of $25,000 to the student judged to have the greatest potential to make an important contribution to the field of music. From 2002 to 2006, Ryan served as Assistant Organist and Choir Director at Metropolitan United Church, which boasts the largest pipe organ in Canada.


Ryan is in the final stages of completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree program at the Juilliard School as a recipient of the C. V. Starr Fellowship. He will graduate in the spring of 2013, having completed a thesis on the history and technique of arranging music for organ. For more information on Ryan, please visit his website at www.ryanwilliamjackson.com