Christian Lane
Biographie Christian Lane
Christian Lane
Winner of the 2011 Canadian International Organ Competition, Christian Lane is one of America’s most accomplished and versatile young organists.
“A true artist whose gratifying musical maturity is demonstrated through playing that is suave, elegant, and exciting (The American Organist)”, Mr. Lane also earned first prize in four major American organ competitions before reaching his twenty-first birthday: the 2000 Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition/USA, the 2001 American Guild of Organists (AGO) Region III Competition for Young Organists, the 2002 Augustana Arts/Reuter National Undergraduate Organ Competition, and the 2002 Arthur Poister National Organ Competition. In 2004, he earned both second prize and the audience prize in the AGO National Young Artist Competition (NYACOP), widely considered to be the preeminent organ-playing competition in the United States.
A 2004 graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York, Mr. Lane earned his Bachelor of Music in Organ Performance with highest distinction and served as undergraduate Marshall at the school’s commencement exercises. He simultaneously completed the school’s Diploma program in Sacred Music, gaining valuable insight about and experience within a wide spectrum of Christian worship traditions. At Eastman, his primary teacher and mentor was Professor David Higgs.
Subsequently, as a Robert Baker Scholar at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and School of Music, Mr. Lane earned a Master of Music in Organ Performance in 2008. During his time at Yale,
Christian Lane Biography, he was awarded two noteworthy prizes: the Charles Ives Prize for an outstanding organ major and the Mary Baker Prize for excellence in organ accompaniment. His primary lessons were with a foremost specialist in romantic organ performance, Professor Thomas Murray. In addition to intensive study on the famed Newberry Organ in Woolsey Hall, his studies spanned the broad spectrum of organ repertoire – including performances on the university’s new Taylor & Boody organ in meantone temperament. At Yale, he was also a teaching fellow in music history and a secondary organ instructor, teaching undergraduate students for credit-earning lessons. He regularly performed as accompanist and continuo player with the university’s premier choral ensemble, the Yale Schola Cantorum under the direction of Simon Carrington; these collaborations included a tour of southern France and a recording of the Bach and Mendelssohn Magnificats released by NAXOS.
Passionate about commissioning new music and using the organ in collaborative settings, Mr. Lane regularly performs with internationally acclaimed soprano Jolle Greenleaf. Focusing on repertoire of the Renaissance and Baroque periods coupled with works from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these collaborations have been well received in concerts across the United States. In the fall of 2007, the pair premiered a song cycle by composer Nicholas White, From Earth to Heaven, and in 2011 premiered a solo cantata, Circe, by Carson Cooman, an American composer with whom Mr. Lane keeps close collaboration. Mr. Lane has also commissioned and premiered works of Nico Muhly, one of America’s most noteworthy young composers (whose first opera enters the repertoire of the Metropolitan Opera this season).
As a soloist, Mr. Lane performs regularly throughout the United States and in Europe. Notable venues include St. Patrick’s Cathedral (New York), both St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey in London, and Washington National Cathedral. He was a featured performer at the 2013 National Convention of the Royal Canadian College of Organists in Ottawa, the 2005 Christian Lane
AGO Region VI Convention in Colorado Springs, and a “Rising Star” performer at the 2002 National AGO Convention in Philadelphia. In 2012, Mr. Lane performed a solo pre-convention recital at the AGO National Convention in Nashville; in 2014, he will perform two featured programs during the AGO National Convention in Boston.
Christian Lane’s first solo recording was released in 2012 to critical acclaim on the Canadian label ATMA Classique. In the coming year, two discs featuring the newly installed Skinner and Fisk organs at Harvard University will be released alongside two further discs on which he serves as choral accompanist.
Mr. Lane has been privileged to serve within some of the country’s most respected parish music programs, including two in Rochester, NY: Third Presbyterian and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where he succeeded Eastman Professor Emeritus David Craighead following 48 years of distinguished service. In New Haven, Mr. Lane was Assistant Organist at the Episcopal Church of Trinity-on-the-Green where he worked with one of the last remaining choirs of Men & Boys in the country. Notably, Mr. Lane also served for two years as assistant organist to John Scott at the Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue, New York City. At Saint Thomas, he worked with the parish’s world-renowned choir of Men & Boys amidst six choral services per week, and was also head of music for the church’s residential choir school.
Christian Lane is currently Associate University Organist and Choirmaster at Harvard
University. There, he works with the University Choir and the Choral Fellows in Sunday services
broadcast on public radio and at the university’s daily services of Morning Prayers, a Harvard term-time tradition since 1636. Increasingly in demand as a pedagogue, Mr. Lane serves as primary
teacher to Harvard organ students and, in the past few years, has cultivated what is currently the
largest organ studio in the Ivy League. Additionally, he teaches regularly on summer programs,
including England’s venerable Oundle for Organists, and has given master classes and workshops
Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc.
