Featured Artist

Judy Congdon has served since 1991 as Professor of Organ and College Organist at Houghton University (formerly Houghton College) in Houghton, NY. In this position her primary responsibility (and joy!) has been to teach organ to both majors and nonmajors, both grad and undergrad. Houghton is a small Christian liberal arts university with a strong tradition of musical training, and Dr. Congdon’s responsibilities there have over the years included teaching harpsichord, theory, counterpoint, service playing, hymnology, and various church-music related courses in addition to organ. Her former students include many church musicians and music educators, now leading their own thriving music programs.

Alongside teaching Dr. Congdon has a now-long history as a church musician. From 1979-1985 she served as full-time organist and children’s choir director at the First Presbyterian Church in Midland, Texas. During doctoral studies at Eastman School of Music she served as Director of Music/Organist at the Baptist Temple in Rochester, NY, where she founded a children’s choir program. From 1996-2002 she commuted weekly from Houghton to Olean, NY where she served as Organist/Choirmaster at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. For the past ten years she has served in the music ministry at Houghton Wesleyan Church in Houghton, NY, a church closely connected to Houghton University. At Houghton Wesleyan Church Dr. Congdon directs the church choir and plays weekly services on the 2008 James Louder tracker organ, acquired as a joint commission of Houghton University and Houghton Wesleyan Church.

Dr. Congdon has performed frequently locally and regionally in recent years, both solo recitals and performance in collaboration with others. During the COVID pandemic she performed livestreamed organ programs monthly at Houghton Wesleyan Church. In earlier years she has played recitals in many parts of the United States, as well as Germany, Italy, and Russia. She is featured organ performer on five CD recordings, four of them produced by APAD Digital Recordings, and has presented workshops on various topics at numerous AGO chapter events in New York and New Jersey and at the Calvin Worship Symposium in 2006. She was a featured recitalist at the 2019 Regional AGO Convention in Buffalo, NY, a convention chaired by one of her former Houghton students. Her work has also included serving as judge in regional and national organ-playing competitions.

Judy Congdon’s training in organ includes the B.Mus. from Wheaton College, Illinois (1975), the M.Mus. from the University of Colorado (Boulder, 1977), a performer’s certificate from the Musikhochschule in Frankfurt, Germany where she was a Fulbright scholar (1977-78), and the DMA in Organ Performance and Literature (and also an MA in Music Theory) from Eastman School of Music (1990), where she was a student of David Craighead and received a teaching excellence award in her role as Craighead’s graduate assistant. In 2013 Congdon completed a second doctorate in Worship Studies at the Robert E. Webber Institute.