Piping up: Organist lobbies for access

BY HEATHER STEIN

Gail Archer, choral conductor, lecturer and concert organist, is advocating for women — as organists.

Archer has traveled across the U.S. and abroad, and is steadfast in her belief that the profession remains a male bastion, despite the surfeit of female talent in the field.

“The more highly educated and skilled a women organist is, the more likely she is to have a disappointing professional response from an employer,” said Archer, who lives on the Upper West Side.

Brilliant women organists are regularly passed over in the application or promotion process, treated unkindly in the workplace or dismissed from their jobs as organists, she said.

Archer, an international recording artist, said she has experienced discrimination herself and endeavored to survey women organists in North America, the results of which she published in the Journal of the International Alliance of Women in Music.

“There are no women leading a conservatory organ program in North America,” she said. “There are two women serving as cathedral musicians in a major U.S. city, Seattle and Phoenix. I know the statistics because I did the research myself and published the results.”

She created a women organist advocacy group, Musforum, which profiles one member each month and publishes an online magazine three times a year. The site contains a database of women organists along with information about upcoming conferences.

“The network allows us to stay in touch and to support each other,” she said. “I know that our network is meaningful to our members because our numbers are few and there are great distances between us. We affirm one another when we have an open channel to communicate regularly.”

The group’s second-ever formal gathering, “Prairie Voices: A Musforum Conference,” will take place in Omaha, Nebraska, in June.

Archer, 64, learned music by singing in church and in school choirs starting when she was 8. She also learned to play the piano. She was 13 when she discovered the organ and has pursued both ever since.

“I am a practicing Roman Catholic and my faith has been an inspiration in my work,” she said. “My family attended the Union Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson, New Jersey. The organist there encouraged my interest in choir and organ from the beginning.”

Archer, director of music at Barnard since 1994, earned a bachelor’s in music education from Montclair State University — “I am a first generation college graduate!” she said — and a master’s in piano from the University of Hartford. She later earned a master’s in choral conducting from the Mannes School of Music and a doctorate in organ performance from the Manhattan School of Music.

Archer began her Barnard career in 1988 as the director of the Barnard Columbia Chorus. She is also the college organist at Vassar College where, she said, she has built a strong organ program.

She performs about 50 concerts a year across the country and abroad. Her New York City recital series this fall will focus on the work of Max Reger, commemorating the centenary of his death. The third concert in Ms. Archer’s fall Reger series will take place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Nov. 27.

“Having strong piano skills helped me to transition to organ easily,” she said. “Singing in choirs gave me the ability to sight read very well and to hear all the parts clearly. One needs the theory and ear training that conservatories provide to be a professional musician and the discipline to practice long hours.”

That talent and dedication has propelled her to her profession’s heights. She’s now campaigning for allies.

www.musforum.org.