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Jeff Fowler has been working as a church musician in the Philadelphia and Detroit metropolitan areas since 1970. He grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and holds degrees from West Chester University and the University of Michigan. At Michigan he studied under and worked as teaching assistant to University Organist, Marilyn Mason, and was awarded the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, the David McK. Williams Scholarship, and the degree Doctor of Musical Arts.
Dr. Fowler has been the Minister of Music at WPC since 1992, during which time the music program has grown from about 150 participants in six choirs to over 500 participants in ten choirs. The oratorio choir has performed 76 major choral works with orchestra since his reorganization of the choir in 1992. Jeff is also adjunct professor of organ at Eastern University in St. Davids. He has performed for audiences in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, as well as for Sunday High Mass at the Vatican. He played the Michigan premier of Olivier Messiaen's "Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité."
Jeff has been active with the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Guild of Organists (AGO), serving on its Executive Committee; as Chair of the Exhibits Committee for the 2002 National AGO Convention at the Philadelphia Marriott attended by 2,500 people; and as Sub-Dean and then Dean of the Philadelphia AGO Chapter. In November 2007, he put together a choir of 450 singers organized from 535 singers who volunteered from 61 churches on behalf of the Philadelphia Presbytery for a first of its kind event, a massed choir concert entitled "One Joyful Choir" at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center directed by Anton Armstrong (St. Olaf College) and accompanied by brass and the Kimmel Center organ, the largest choir to ever sing at the Kimmel Center. Jeff is currently directing work on a similar event scheduled for the Kimmel Center, November 13, 2010.
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