As it has done for over a half-century, Friends of Music at Guilford (FOMAG) opens its 53rd annual music season with a concert in a rural barn on Saturday night of Labor Day Weekend. The Organ Barn is in an idyllic setting at Tree Frog Farm on Kopkind Rd. (off Packer Corners Rd.) near the state line where Guilford meets Leyden, Massachusetts. The intimate Barn seats close to a hundred concertgoers.

At 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 1, guest organist James Gerber, DMA, performs solo works by Baroque masters Dieterich Buxtehude, J. S. Bach, and Johann Gottfried Walther, as well as Suite Gothique (1895) by French composer Léon Boëllman and Master Tallis's Testament (1940) by English composer Herbert Howells. This Organ Barn performance, as others in the past, includes enlightening commentary from the stage.

Dr. Gerber, a life-long church musician, served congregations in his home state of Wisconsin, as well as in Minnesota and Arizona, before becoming Associate Minister of Music at Wayne Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania. His bachelor's degree in Organ Performance is from the University of Wisconsin, his master's in Liturgical Music, with an organ emphasis, from St. John's University, and his Doctor of Musical Arts in Organ Performance from Arizona State. An active member of the American Guild of Organists, he enjoys performing, presenting music-related lectures, accompanying choirs and musical theater, and playing the clarinet in a community band.

The concert is admission-free, with donations welcome to defray the considerable costs of this weekend in the country. A reception follows on the back deck of the farmhouse; if the weather is not friendly, the reception is moved indoors.

On Sunday afternoon, two hundred or more people flock to the lawn outside the Barn for picnicking and an orchestra concert. See separate listing for this event. The complete schedule of 2018-19 concerts is online at www.fomag.org. Contact the Friends of Music office for a calendar brochure at (802) 254-3600 or office@fomag.org.

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