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By Linda Worthington
UMConnection Staff

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Ever since she was a young child, Eileen Guenther wanted to make music. She has achieved her music goals superbly. Over a month this fall, she was featured in two very different concerts, one in a local church, one at the Kennedy Center.

Guenther, an associate professor of music at Wesley Theological Seminary, for 30 years was minister of music and liturgy at Foundry UMC in Washington, D.C. She has recently become the Director of Music, Organist and Pianist at First Congregational UCC in Washington. With peer recognition of her talent, as well as her administrative skills, she is serving a third term as president of the American Guild of Organists.

Guenther is an internationally recognized recitalist and has played organs in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. South Africa holds a special place in her heart; in December she led her seventh group of students from Wesley Seminary on an immersion trip.

In addition to performances, Guenther teaches music and worship at both Wesley Seminary and George Washington University, as well as around the world. She has been a visiting lecturer at Africa University in Zimbabwe, and taught music and worship in Uganda for the East Africa Conference.

The concert at the Kennedy Center Oct. 30 was a good venue to show off her accomplishment as an organist. Playing on the new Rubenstein organ, with its near 5,000 pipes, her feet flew on the pedals and her fingers on the four keyboards as she played compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Marcel Dupre (1886-1971), and more contemporary composers, Emma Lou Diemer (b. 1927) and Joe Utterback (b. 1944).

“The carillon at the end of the Bach piece expresses the joy I feel about the evening,” she said.

She praised the organ, saying “It’s a gift to all of us.” The organ is indeed a “gift,” due in part to the generosity of Kennedy Center Board Chairman, David M. Rubenstein, on the occasion of the Center’s 40th anniversary. It replaced the Filene organ, which Guenther had played on its debut. Sixty-one pipes from the Filene organ were put in the new organ.

At Woodside UMC in the Silver Spring Cooperative Parish a month earlier, Guenther exhibited her dramatic and academic talent, as well as her musical gifts. She narrated a program she wrote called “The Power of Spirituals: in Word and Song.” It took the audience along the painful path slaves trod in America, from their arrival in 1619 to their arduous journey to freedom in 1863. Various choir members read the spoken parts, often in the first person, sometimes through letters sent, sometimes as story-telling.

“I hope (the spirituals) will connect with your soul,” Guenther said. “Spirituals are personal and communal.  They speak to the heart from the heart.”

Two spirituals were woven into the Kennedy Center concert: “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” and “There is a Balm in Gilead” from Utterback’s “Two Spirituals for Organ in Jazz Styles.” “Balm in Gilead” at the Woodside concert was a choral piece sung by soloists from Silver Spring’s St. Luke Lutheran Church Schola Cantorum.

Also at the Kennedy Center concert, Guenther repeated from the spirituals concert an African-rooted traditional Nigerian melody, “Yoruba Lament.” Guenther said she’d chosen the piece to include in her repertoire because she wanted something that reflected another culture and people. “I wanted to show that organ music didn’t all have to have Western or European roots,” she said.

Part of the inspiration for the Woodside performance and for Guenther’s forthcoming book, “The Power of Spirituals,” was her trips to South Africa. Guenther’s “Rival or a Team: Clergy-Musician Relationships in the 21st Century,” was published in 2012.

Choirs and soloists from Woodside UMC, Colesville UMC, and Good Shepherd UMC were joined by St. Luke Lutheran Church Schola Cantorum and Christ Congregational Church UCC, all of Silver Spring. From the minute the five choirs processed in together singing “O Freedom,” until after each had performed, the audience, filling the church, was enthralled.

“I was so moved when all those choir members marched down the aisle singing “O Freedom”, said Lianna Simons, a member of St. Luke’s Lutheran. “It made my heart flutter.”