At Emmanuel United Methodist Church, 401 main Street, Amherst VA 24521, AGAR and the church will co-sponsor a delightful concert of secular and sacred works from  the 16th to 20th Century, performed by Peggy Haas Howell concert organist assisted by Cantate Children's and Youth Choir of Lynchburg and Elizabeth Wilkerson. The concert will be performed by Mrs. Howell on the church's Bedient Pipe Organ. 

Peggy Haas Howell is the organist and choirmaster at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lynchburg, VA, and music director of Cantate Children’s and Youth Choir, a community group. Called a “play-anything virtuoso” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, she is well-known as a recitalist and has played concerts in England, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Hungary and Poland as well as the United States. Recent engagements have included recitals for the Atlanta Summer Organ Festival and the International Organ Festival in Pelplin, Poland. She won first prize in the National Young Artists Organ Playing Competition of the American Guild of Organists (1974) and a shared top prize at the St. Alban’s International Organ Interpretation Competition in England (1977). She has recorded for the BBC, Sender Freies Berlin, the Finnish Broadcasting Service and Raven Recordings.
Before moving to Virginia in 1996, Ms. Howell taught organ for 10 years at Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.  Ms. Howell graduated from Susquehanna University with a Bachelor of Arts in Church Music degree and from Union Theological Seminary with a Master of Sacred Music degree. She also attended the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Hamburg, Germany. Her organ teachers have included Harald Vogel, Cherry Rhodes,Heinz Wunderlich, Charles Dodsley Walker and James Boeringer. She is married to organ builder, Richard Howell.

​To read about the Bedient Pipe Organ, click here:  https://bedientorgan.com/

Elizabeth Wilkinson serves as Assistant Director and Accompanist of Cantate. She is the organist/choirmaster for Grace Memorial Episcopal Church in Lynchburg, and graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman's College, an organ student of Roger Cole.

Cantate Children’s and Youth Choir is an organization dedicated to bringing classical choral music to the youth of Central Virginia. This is Cantate’s 31st season. Cantate recently performed in the opera “Tosca” at the historic Academy Center of the Arts in downtown Lynchburg with Opera on the James. They will be singing in the “Nutcracker” performed by the Charlottesville Ballet and accompanied by the Lynchburg Symphony this December. The community choir is open to children and youth from second grade through high school. 
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