Rosalind MohnsenBiography – 2016Rosalind Mohnsen, a native of Nebraska, is Director of Music and Organist at Immaculate Conception Church of Malden/Medford, Massachusetts, in the greater Boston area, where she has completed thirty-three years of service. Previous positions were at St. Joseph’s Church in Belmont, MA, and on the faculty of Westmar College, LeMars, Iowa.As a church musician, she has developed the program and the choir in her present position. Recognizing the importance of chant, for five years the Parish Choir sang the Propers of the Mass every Sunday in English chant, and with some Latin as well. The Choir has sung in English, Latin, German and Russian. The Choir has completed thirty years of three concerts annually, including 27 Christmas Lessons and Carols programs, 30 annual Ecumenical Palm Sunday Concerts with combined choirs and orchestra, and 30 annual Spring Choir Concerts. The Choir has participated for thirty years in the Festival of Carols at the First Baptist Church in Malden, a city-wide musical event now beyond its seventieth year. Boston composers have figured prominently in the repertoire of the Choir, including women composers, Mabel Daniels, Margaret Ruthven Lang, Edith Lang, and Katherine K. Davis, as well as John Cook, Everett Titcomb, William Billings, George Krim, Alexander Peloquin, and Alan Hovhannes. “I am grateful for the many years I have worked in church music, which is my main interest. I also enjoy singing with a Women’s Chant Schola in another parish, where Latin chant and polyphony are sung”.As a concert organist, Rosalind has performed in such venues as Methuen Memorial Music Hall, City Hall in Portland, Maine, Yale University’s Woolsey Hall, The National Shrine in Washington, D. C. and Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston. She has been a frequent performer for Boston’s First Night, has performed for A.G.O. Chapters in Richmond, Lincoln and Pasadena, for twenty-three national conventions of the Organ Historical Society, for the 2014 A.G.O. National Convention in Boston, and in Riga, Latvia and Stockholm, Sweden. She continues her interest in our American organ-building heritage, and has served on committees of the Organ Historical Society and the Boston chapter of the American Guild of Organists.She served as Interim Organist and Director at the Cathedral of The Holy Cross in Boston, has sung with Cathedral Festival Choir, and also with Sharing a New Song Chorus on their tours of Cuba and Russia.She received the Bachelor of Music in Education degree in piano from the University of Nebraska and the Master of Music degree and Performer’s Certificate in organ from Indiana University. She studied piano with Clara Jones, Herbert Grabau, and Thomas Fritz, and studied organ with Myron J. Roberts, Conrad Morgan, Robert Rayfield, and in Paris with Jean Langlais. She was initiated into Pi Kappa Lambda and is a member of Sigma Alpha Iota.
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