Rhonda Sider Edgington - Organ

Rhonda Sider Edgington is an eclectic musician, with strengths and interests lying in several diverse areas.Through her studies the last five years in Bremen, Germany with Harald Vogel and experience on historic organs in the region, she has acquired an extensive repertoire from Scheidt to CPE Bach. In 2007, she was chosen to play in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam as a finalist in the International Sweelinck Competition, playing a recital of music composed between 1560 and 1660.

Before arriving in Bremen with a Fulbright scholarship in 2004, Rhonda was organist at the First United Church of Oak Park. The 88-rank Casavant there, especially well-suited to French repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries, inspired her to focus those years on composers from Franck through Messiaen and record a CD of those works. (After hearing Rhonda play Dupré, one Parisian organist remarked "You don’t sound like a student of Harald Vogel!")

An avid chamber musician, Rhonda has appeared in concerts playing piano, harpsichord, and organ in combinations ranging from piano trios and Lieder accompaniments, to organ and brass or organ and strings, and also as an early music continuo player with soloists and ensembles. She appears as solo organist and continuo player on two CD’s of early Christmas music with the Weser-Renaissance Ensemble, Bremen.

As a carillonneur, Rhonda was heard weekly at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Carillon, has played concerts in Chicago’s Botanical Gardens, and on the Naperville Millennium Carillon, and was heard at the national conventions of the Guild of Carillonneurs of America and Organ Historical Society.

As organ recitalist, Rhonda has played concerts in northern Europe, on instruments such as the Arp Schnitger organs in Norden and Steinkirchen, the Jugend Ahrend organ in Bremen’s St. Martini Church, and a mean-tone instrument with subsemitones in Bremen-Walle. She has played recitals throughout the US’s East Coast and Midwest, including venues such as Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis, St. Paul’s Episcopal in Buffalo, and Fourth Presbyterian and Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. A friend of many varied styles and repertoire for the organ, Rhonda has also played in four national conventions of the Organ Historical Society.

Rhonda has worked as church musician since her student days, and has also served in recent years as organist and choir director in two German churches. As organ teacher, Rhonda worked as Assistant Professor at Concordia University, River Forest, and Interim Professor of Organ at Houghton College, in New York State. Her studies have been, in Bremen with Harald Vogel, Hans-Ola Ericson, and Hans Davidsson, and in the States with Larry Smith, Marilyn Keiser, John Chappell Stowe, Edward Zimmerman, and her father.

A supporter of the American Guild of Organists, Rhonda was dean of the student chapter while doing her masters at Indiana University, and later on the Chicago AGO board, as well as working with the 2006 Convention Planning Committee.

After living in Bremen, Germany for seven years, she recently moved with her husband Mark, and children Isaac and Esther to Holland, Michigan.  There Rhonda is organist at Hope Church (Reformed Church of America) and staff accompanist at Hope College.  She is represented by Ariel Artists.