Organ Recital

Erica Johnson performs works by Bach, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude and more.

Erica Johnson is a native of Winston-Salem, NC, where she began her musical training with John and Margaret Mueller and completed her secondary studies at the North Carolina School of the Arts. She continued her education at Oberlin College and Conservatory, graduating in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Bachelor of Music degree in Organ Performance. Organ instruction was under Haskell Thomson. A subsequent two-year residence in Boston afforded her the opportunity to work as Organ Scholar at the Memorial Church of Harvard University while concurrently studying towards her Master of Music degree at the New England Conservatory (2001), where she studied with William Porter.

With the assistance of a generous grant from the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund for Musicians in 2001, Erica investigated historical keyboard technique and instruments in Bremen, Germany for two years. At the Hochschule für Künste she studied organ with Harald Vogel and harpsichord with Carsten Lohff, and spent most of her weekends exploring historical instruments in Ostfriesland and Niedersachsen, particularly those of Arp Schnitger. In August of 2002 she was awarded second prize in the Norddeutsche Rundfunk International Organ Competition, which was held in three rounds on the seventeenth-century organs of Basedow, Stade, and Norden. In November of 2004, she was awarded the 2004 International Arp Schnitger Preis in Hamburg, Germany, by the Arp Schnitger Gesellschaft in recognition of her experience on these organs. Erica was also named Wesfield Scholar for the academic year 2004-05.

In the fall of 2003 Erica began the Doctor of Musical Arts program at the Eastman School of Music, where she studies organ with Hans Davidsson and harpsichord with William Porter. She is a student leader of the Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative (EROI). Erica is also the organist of the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Rochester, NY, where it is her distinct privilege to play the 1929 Wurlitzer (church) organ every week.