Organist to Present Ukrainian Music for Fall Festival of the Arts

By Susan L. Peña

Internationally renowned concert and recording organist Gail Archer will present rarely heard music by contemporary Ukrainian composers on Friday, Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. in Trinity Lutheran Church as part of the Fall Festival of the Arts. Two days later, the festival will present Barynya, featuring Ukrainian folk dances and songs, at the WCR Center for the Arts at 3 p.m. The two concerts are meant to celebrate the rich cultural heritage of Ukraine, and to show solidarity with the Ukrainian people in this time of war.

Archer, who was born in Paterson, N.J. and grew up in nearby Prospect Park, started out as a pianist, like many organists. “I remember my father and his friends carrying an old player piano down the block one Saturday morning,” she said. “My parents bought it for $50 from two older women in our neighborhood. I was excited beyond words that I was going to get a piano.”

She began lessons at 8, and she sang in the children’s choir at her church, as her father sang in the adult choir. And all the time, she heard the organ, falling in love with its many sound-colors. When she was 13, the organist began teaching her to play the organ, and encouraged her to continue.

After graduating from Montclair (N.J.) State University, Archer went on to earn two master’s degrees, from the University of Hartford and the Mannes College of Music, and a doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music. In 1988, she joined the faculty of Barnard College of Columbia University, where she directs the Barnard-Columbia Chorus and Chamber Choir and teaches music history. She also serves as college organist at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

In the spring of 2008, Archer made a splash in the concert world by playing the complete works of Olivier Messiaen in six concerts in six different churches in New York City. The sixth and final concert was his 18-part “Livre du Saint Sacrement,” at St. Patrick’s Cathedral during the composer’s centennial celebration, while she was still at the Manhattan School. The review in the New York Times said: "Archer played with an unflagging power and assertiveness" and "within Ms. Archer's vivid, muscular performance, in fact, were moments of striking simplicity."

Archer released her first album, “The Orpheus of Amsterdam” (harking back to her family’s Dutch roots) in 2005. She has since released 10 more, the latest of which is “Dobrich: A Bulgarian Odyssey,” released in April 2025.

“I’m always exploring new music,” Archer said. “Many people only play French Romantic composers like Widor and Vierne. No one knows the Eastern European music is out there.” Her recordings are far-reaching in time and place, and include albums of Ukrainian, Russian and Polish organ music.

She recently returned from her 25th six-week summer tour of Europe, performing on organs of wildly different ages and sizes, from a historic organ in Varsi, Italy, to a modern four-manual, 4,000+-pipe organ in St. Martin’s Cathedral in Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

“I played five different programs,” she said. “I have to design programs that are appropriate for each instrument.” Adapting to the wide array of instruments is “the fun part” for Archer, and she loves this challenge. Her programs included an all-Baroque one; others were a mix of styles and nationalities; one was a “Concert for Peace”—half Russian, half Ukrainian.

The program she will present for the Fall Festival will be taken from her recording, “Chernivtsi,” named for the city near the Romanian border in Eastern Ukraine where she performed on “a beautiful Rieger-Kloss organ in the Armenian Catholic Church in 2020,” Archer said.

She has performed in Ukraine every year since 2015, she said, and has many friends there, including both organists (particularly Elena Udras in Odesa and Olenka Matseliukh in Lviv) and composers. Bohdan Kotyuk, an ethno-organologist whose works are included in the album, has become a good friend. “He and some others sent many scores,” Archer said, “with lots of possibilities, some published, some not. Often they came directly from the composers.”

Archer was delighted to hear that Barynya will also be appearing in Reading, since much of the organ music she will be playing is inspired by the dance rhythms and melodies (built on irregular meters and non-Western scales) of the folk music and dances.

In the past, she said, she toured Russia to play concerts, including in 2013, just before the Winter Olympics in Sochi. During that tour, she crossed the entire country on the Siberian Railroad. Regrettably, she said, she can no longer travel in Russia, Belarus or Ukraine because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and subsequent war.

Archer said much of her work on Eastern European music has been supported by grants from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, the center for Russian, Eurasian and East European studies. She will be the center’s co-deputy director of the East Central European Center for the next two years. Archer is also the founder of Musforum, an international network for women organists to promote and affirm their work.