Nancianne Parrella, organist

James Feddeck enjoys a rewarding and multi-faceted musical career, which began with his first professional appointment as church organist at age eight and music director of his native New York church. Studies in the piano and oboe paralleled his pursuit of the organ and led to performances in venues including Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, The Eastman Theatre, and the Albuquerque Sculpture Garden. Having been admitted to the Oberlin Conservatory of Music on all three instruments: oboe, organ, and piano, he holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Oberlin in oboe and organ performance as well as conducting. He was recipient of both the conservatory’s prestigious Selby Harlan Houston Prize for exemplary scholarship in organ and music theory and the Pi Kappa Lambda Musicianship Prize. First place winner of the AGO/Quimby Regional Competition for Young Organists (representing Region II), Mr. Feddeck has performed organ recitals throughout the world, and has been featured on national radio broadcasts. His organ teachers have included the legendary Robert G. Owen, Haskell Thomson, and James David Christie. He has participated in master classes in the United States and abroad studying with Lionel Rogg, Thomas Murray, Daniel Roth, and Jean-Pierre Leguay. As a conductor, Mr. Feddeck has served as assistant conductor of the Oberlin Conservatory orchestras, Cleveland’s Red {an orchestra}, and has attended the renowned American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival and School under the mentorship of David Zinman.

Renée Anne Louprette has established a career as an internationally recognized organ recitalist and as a choral conductor. Since 2005, Ms. Louprette has been the Associate Director of Music at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, New York City. There she assists Kent Tritle in the direction of the renowned music ministry program encompassing more than 400 liturgies with music annually, and in this capacity Ms. Louprette serves as liturgical organist, accompanist, and conductor of both professional and amateur ensembles, as well as liaison to the three Jesuit schools connected to the institution. As a collaborator in the artistic direction of the acclaimed Sacred Music in a Sacred Space series, she directs the organ concert component of the series and performs regularly as recitalist and continuo player. Ms. Louprette is featured in a new documentary film about the St. Ignatius Loyola Mander pipe organ entitled “Creating the Stradivarius of Organs” of Pheasant Eye Productions. Prior to coming to St. Ignatius, she served as Director of Music and Organist at the Church of St. Ann in Avon, Connecticut, where she developed an extensive choral program and directed a concert tour of Italy in 2002, and at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Montclair, New Jersey.

Ms. Louprette has performed at numerous organ festivals throughout Europe, including In Tempore Organi, Italy; the festivals of Ghent and Hasselt, Belgium; and Toulouse Les Orgues, France. She has participated in the international organ competitions of Chartres, France; Bruges, Belgium, and the national competition of the American Guild of Organists. Highlights of the 2006-2007 season include solo recitals at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, Virginia; the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey; and in July 2007, at the international organ festival of Magadino in Ticino, Switzerland, opened by Marcel Dupré in 1963. Also this July, Ms. Louprette will be a featured concerto soloist at the Region II Convention of the American Guild of Organists in New York City. She was a recitalist in the 2005 Region I AGO Convention in Hartford, Connecticut, where she had formerly served as Dean of the Chapter.

An esteemed accompanist, Ms. Louprette has served a number of well-established choirs and orchestras since her recent arrival in New York City including the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall, Musica Sacra, the Dessoff Choirs, the National Chorale and Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, Orchestra of Our Time, Piffaro, the Bronx Arts Ensemble, and the Fordham University Choir. She has performed extensively as accompanist throughout the northeastern U.S. with numerous choral ensembles including CONCORA (Connecticut Choral Artists), Chorus Angelicus and Gaudeamus (at Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood) and for the Bard Music Festival (Ives and Haydn festivals). As organist and harpsichordist, she performed with l'Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse under the direction of Richard Hickox, the Musica Nova and Antiphona ensembles of Toulouse, Orchestra New England, and the keyboard trio TRIPTYCH directed by composer Paul Halley. European accompanying engagements included performances in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, and the festival Éclats de Voix in Auch, France. An experienced musician in the musical theatre genre, she performs regularly on Broadway as keyboardist for The Phantom of the Opera.

Renée Anne Louprette holds a Bachelor of Music degree summa cum laude in piano performance and a Graduate Professional Diploma in organ performance from the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, where she began organ studies in 1993 with Larry Allen. She pursued private studies in organ with Dame Gillian Weir in London under grant sponsorship, and later with James David Christie at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Ms. Louprette earned a Diplôme Supérieur in organ performance in 2005 from the Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de Musique et de Danse de Toulouse, France under the guidance of Michel Bouvard, Jan Willem Jansen and Philippe Lefebvre. She had previously earned a Premier Prix mention très bien from the Conservatoire National de Région de Toulouse in 2003.

Organist Nancianne Parrella has been associate organist of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, New York for over ten years and works with director Kent Tritle in the extensive liturgical music program. She is featured frequently on the highly acclaimed concert series, Sacred Music in a Sacred Space. In recent seasons, she has played and recorded the Duruflé Requiem; given the New York premiere of Stephan Paulus’s Concerto for Organ, Orchestra and Choir; created and performed an organ mass from works of J. S. Bach, followed by playing continuo for Bach’s Mass in B minor. The American Organist hailed her recent CD Jubilations, as “sweeping, dramatic and awe inspiring…” It was recorded on the remarkable Mander Organ with the St. Ignatius Brass Ensemble.

Among America’s preeminent choral accompanists, Ms. Parrella was accompanist and assistant director of the famed Westminster Choir and the Westminster Symphonic Choir, both directed by Joseph Flummerfelt. Tours have covered America, Europe and Asia, and recently AVIE has released Heaven and Earth, her latest CD with the Westminster Choir. She was long associated with America’s pioneering choral conductor, the late Robert Shaw, with whom she also toured for many seasons in France, Brazil and the U.S. In addition, she has collaborated with noted conductors including Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit and Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic; Wolfgang Sawallisch and The Philadelphia Orchestra; and Zdenek Macal and Neeme Järvi and the New Jersey Symphony.

In recent concerts, Ms. Parrella played the first New York performance of John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple as part of the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, and was soloist in Julian Wachner’s Cymbale; as well as Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani at the Spoleto Festival USA, where she has performed for many seasons. She has recorded on the AMDG, AVIE, Chesky, Delos, Gothic, Dorian, MSR, Telarc and Teldec labels. Her newest release, Les Corps Glorieux, features cellist Arthur Fiacco and harpist Victoria Drake, in combination with the magnificent Mander Organ at St. Ignatius.