About Us

Updated 08 Mar 2010

Purpose | American Guild of Organists | Los Angeles Chapter

Purpose of AGO

The purpose of the American Guild of Organists is to promote the organ in its historic and evolving roles, to encourage excellence in the performance of organ and choral music, and to provide a forum for mutual support, inspiration, education, and certification of Guild members.

American Guild of Organists

The American Guild of Organists (AGO) is the national professional association serving the organ and choral music fields. Chartered in 1896 by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, AGO now serves over 18,000 members throughout the United States and in several foreign countries. There are over 300 local chapters in nine regions, with national headquarters in New York City. AGO is said to be the largest membership organization devoted to a single musical instrument.

AGO publishes a monthly magazine, The American Organist, which is the most widely read journal devoted to organ and choral music in the world. It is the official journal of the American Guild of Organists and the Royal Canadian College of Organists, dedicated to furthering their ideals, objectives, and cultural and educational aspirations; and it is the official magazine of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America.

Each summer AGO holds conventions: a national convention in even-numbered years, and regional conventions in odd-numbered years.

For more information about the American Guild of Organists or The American Organist magazine, see the AGO National Web site.

Los Angeles Chapter

With nearly 400 members, the Los Angeles Chapter is one of the largest AGO chapters. Chartered June 6, 1910, as the first AGO chapter in the area, we are now one of ten chapters in Southern California, and are part of the Angeles District of Region IX (Far West). Learn more on our Chapter History page.

Our chapter activities include a number of performances, educational events, social gatherings, and various other programs each year. We also sponsor performance competitions for young organists and administer several scholarship funds. We publish a newsletter, LA Pipeline; the AGO Calendar, which lists events for three chapters; and the annual AGO Southern California Directory, which lists members, officers, programs and other information from all ten chapters in the area.

After several years of program collaboration with the Pasadena Chapter, that chapter was merged into the Los Angeles Chapter in 1999.

Membership is open to all: professional organists and choir directors, students, and organ enthusiasts alike, regardless of musical ability or denominational affiliation. For information about joining this chapter, see the Membership page.

The Los Angeles Chapter has named as Honorary Life Members the following distinguished individuals:

David Craighead, BMus, DMus(hon), FRCO(hon)
Born in Strasburg, Pennsylvania in 1924, David Craighead studied organ with Clarence Mader in Los Angeles and Alexander McCurdy at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Before completing his degree, he began his career as a touring concert organist, served as organist of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, and joined the faculty of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. After graduation he was appointed organist of Pasadena Presbyterian Church, where he played bi-weekly organ recital broadcasts and accompanied numerous oratorios. From 1948 to 1955 he taught at Occidental College, and he served as dean of the former Pasadena Chapter AGO in 1951-1953.

From 1955 until his retirement in 1992 he was professor of organ and chair of the organ division at the Eastman School of Music and organist of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester, N.Y. He was the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania and an honorary fellowship in the Royal College of Organists in London. He was the first recipient of the Eisenhart Award for teaching excellence at the Eastman School.

Recognized as one of America's great organ artists, David Craighead was voted the 1983 International Performer of the Year by the New York City Chapter of the AGO, and in 2003 was awarded an Honorary Life Membership in the Los Angeles Chapter. For 47 years Mr. Craighead was married to organist Marian Reiff Craighead. Until her death in May, 1996 they presented concerts for organ duet in numerous cities.

Wilbur Held, SMD, AAGO, FAGO
Wilbur Held was born into a musical family in 1914 in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. He attended the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, studying organ with Frank Van Dusen and theory and composition with John Palmer. For seven years he was Leo Sowerby's assistant at St. James Church. Soon after completing his master's degree he received the AAGO and FAGO certificates. In 1946 he joined the faculty of Ohio State University as professor of organ and church music and head of the keyboard department. He remained in this position for over 30 years and for most of that time was also organist-choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbus.

He earned a doctor of sacred music degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York, and studied organ with Marcel Dupré, André Marchal, and Vernon de Tar, and composition with Normand Lockwood and Wallingford Riegger. He has served on the national councils of both the AGO and the Hymn Society of America, and has appeared as recitalist at their national conventions.

His Nativity Suite, published in 1959, has sold well over 25,000 copies. Having written several suites primarily for pedagogical use, he turned his attention to broadening the repertoire for church use, continuing to stress modest technical requirements and flexibility of registration. To date he has published 325 organ works. In 1978, he retired to Claremont, California, where he has continued to be active as clinician, recitalist, and composer.

Robert "Bob" Mitchell, BA, FAGO, AAGO, CAGO, SPC, ChM, FTCL
Bob Mitchell was born in Sierra Madre near Los Angeles on October 12, 1912, when the Los Angeles Chapter was only two years old. Bob began studying piano at age four and organ at ten, and was an organ student of Ernest Douglas, the first dean of this chapter. He started accompanying silent movies at twelve, and when talkies replaced silent films, he turned to church and choir work. He was one of few to have passed all five of the Guild's certification exams, and had the distinction of having been named the youngest Fellow of the AGO at age eighteen. He studied on scholarship at both the Eastman School of Music and the New York College of Music, and worked as a pianist and singer on radio and in a Manhattan speakeasy.

In 1934 Bob founded the Mitchell Choirboys in Los Angeles, well known for some 100 film performances. They were the "best choir in the world" according to Bing Crosby, with whom they performed in the 1944 Academy Award-winning Going My Way. The short film Forty Boys and a Song, about Bob and his boys, was nominated by the Academy in 1939. World War II sent Bob to the Pacific with the Navy. Composer Meredith Willson brought him back for the Armed Forces Radio Service. He was staff pianist-organist on numerous radio stations and early television shows. His choir work, which gave many boys a boost in life, led him to the biographical spotlight of Ralph Edwards' This Is Your Life. In 1962 the Dodgers and Angels chose him as organist for all games at Los Angeles' new ball park, making him the only "player" in baseball to ever play for both major leagues at the same time.

Bob Mitchell served as dean of the Los Angeles Chapter AGO in 1970-1972. Until shortly before his death on July 4, 2009, at age 96, Bob could still be heard several times each month accompanying films at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles. More

Orpha Ochse, BM, MM, PhD
Orpha Ochse is Professor of Music Emerita at Whittier College. She held teaching positions at Central College, Western Illinois State College, and Phoenix College before moving to California in 1957. She was Director of Music at the First Congregational Church, Pasadena, for twelve years, and Lecturer in Music at the California Institute of Technology for fifteen years. She joined the Whittier College faculty in 1969, and retired from teaching in 1987.

Dr. Ochse's activities in the organ profession have included European recital tours, published compositions for organ, and research studies in various aspects of organ playing and organ history. She has served as Dean of the Central Arizona and Pasadena chapters and as a member of the National Council of the American Guild of Organists. In 1991 she was elected a lifetime honorary member of the Organ Historical Society.

Her first book, The History of the Organ in the United States, published in 1975, received international recognition. A second book, Organists and Organ-playing in 19th-Century France and Belgium, was published in 1994, and a third, Austin Organs, in 2001. In 2005 she published Murray M. Harris and Organ Building in Los Angeles, 1894-1913, based on research done by the late David Lennox Smith. Her most recent book is Schoenstein & Co. Organs, published in 2008.

A native of St. Joseph, Missouri, Orpha Ochse enjoys a wide variety of interests in addition to organ research. International bicycle tours and cross-country ski excursions are annual events on her calendar. She is a member of the Pomona Lawn Bowling Club, a volunteer in a local library, and a founding member of the board of directors of the Ruth and Clarence Mader Memorial Scholarship Fund. She served as dean of the former Pasadena Chapter AGO in 1966-1968.

James Vail, BM, MM, DMA
After serving as organist and choirmaster at churches in Philadelphia, Pa., and La Jolla, Calif., James Vail held posts for fifteen years at St. John’s Episcopal Church (now ProCathedral) in Los Angeles and, from 1969 to 2009, at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church near UCLA, where he conducted St. Alban's Choir in well over 100 major choral works, most of them with orchestra.

Dr. Vail is Professor Emeritus of Choral and Church Music at the University of Southern California, where he taught from 1961 to 1999 and chaired the Choral and Church Music Department from 1976 to 1991. The USC Concert Choir, which he conducted for thirty years, appeared under his direction throughout the western and mid-western United States, Germany, Austria and Italy, and sang at a number of national and regional conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and the Music Educators National Conference. His teaching included courses in Choral Literature, Choral Conducting, Choral Development, and Liturgical Music. Upon his retirement, Dr. Vail was chosen by his fellow faculty members as the 1999 recipient of the coveted Ramo Music Faculty Award "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to music and education, to the School of Music and the University of Southern California."

As an organist, Dr. Vail has presented frequent recitals at St. Alban’s as well as in other parts of the country. He served as dean of the Los Angeles Chapter AGO in 1964-1966 and is a past president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Choral Conductors Guild.

A native of Los Angeles, Dr. Vail holds the B.M. degree in organ from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he studied with Alexander McCurdy, whose assistant he was at First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He completed his M.M. and D.M.A. in church music at USC.

The award was bestowed May 14, 2007, by Dean Ronald Sinanian during a Guild Service at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. The service was a Solemn Eucharist with a musical offering of Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass performed by St. Alban's Choir, soloists, and orchestra under James Vail's direction. The presentation said in part:

In the mission statement of the American Guild of Organists, one of our purposes is "to encourage excellence in the performance of organ and choral music," and this ideal has always been exemplified in your work as organist, choirmaster, teacher, and conductor.

In December 2009 Dr. Vail was named an Honorary Canon of the Cathedral Center of St. Paul, a title given by the Bishop of Los Angeles to clergy and laypersons in recognition of significant service.