What’s your association with the Key Chorale? And how did this come about?
When I first moved to town, I knew about all these groups and stuff, and I wasn't really involved in anything. And then during COVID, once lockdown was starting to ease up a little bit, Key Chorale did a great job with staying present within the restrictions and everything. And the way I first got to know (artistic director) Joe (Caulkins), was when he was looking to make recordings.
And my organ teacher also taught me how to be an audio engineer. And so basically, I helped Joe record the Bach “Magnificat” in the church here. You've seen other videos like that; basically, every singer and instrumentalist was spaced throughout the room. And then Joe and I just kind of hit it off, both as humans and as musicians.
Our partnership in this way started a few years ago when we did “Bachtoberfest.” Originally, Redeemer (Church of the Redeemer in Sarasota) used to do an Oktoberfest concert and then a meal afterwards. I've been doing it that way for a few years, turnout was not always great.
And then I said to Joe, “You know, we should just do a big Baroque festival thing.” So, it originally started out with four concerts where Joe and Key Chorale would do an opening and closing, and then in between, I would do a solo organ concert at noon, and then in the evening, I put together a chamber music concert all on period instruments. So, playing at A= 415 and gut strings and all that. And that was a big success. And so, since then, we've just been keeping it rolling and thinking of new things to do every year.
So, A= 415, is that just a tuning method?
Yeah. They call it Baroque pitch, and it's basically a half-step lower. Because of the gut strings and everything, I guess that's where they can tune to. And a lot of violinists that try to convert to Baroque struggle. Because a lot of violinists have perfect pitch. So, they're playing a G, but it's really an F-sharp. But they're fine, they get it.
So, do you have a formal role in Key Chorale?
It's an ongoing relationship.
Tell me about Church of the Redeemer itself. It's kind of known for being a venue for a lot of these wonderful performances in Sarasota. So, can you talk about that?
Yeah, so Church of the Redeemer has a long history of excellent music, actually going back 100 years. And when the church itself started, music was an important part of it. When they were meeting in some little room, they would sing hymns together. And I think, really, what brought Redeemer to a higher level and really got recognition was when Daniel Moe came to be our composer-in-residence.
During his time here, that's when Choral Artists of Sarasota was founded. They don't exist anymore; they just folded. But they were around for a long time. And then, of course, he was the founder of Key Chorale and was the only conductor they had before Joe Caulkins took over. And Daniel really brought a lifetime of experience.
He was the choral directing professor at Oberlin (College and Conservatory) for most of his career and was heavily involved with the Lutheran music community as a ‘cradle Lutheran,’ and his composing. This year (2026) will be his 100th birthday in November, if he were still alive.
And so, he's old enough to have studied with some of these legendary composers that people my age probably think, “Who would ever have known them?” But it's funny to think, this guy studied with Darius Milhaud, and it's like worlds colliding.
But really, when he came here, it brought not only Redeemers’ musical quality up, but the whole community. I mean, it really was like a bomb going off. And, of course, in the kind of broader, if you want to call it secular, musical sense.
His widow, Ann Stephenson-Moe, was the organist-choirmaster here (at Church of the Redeemer) for 46 years before I came. She, in addition to being a talented musician, organist, choir director, is great at fundraising and networking and she really had a great concert series going on here, which at the time, was really beneficial to the town.
She brought in a lot of artists that people wouldn't have already heard. And at this point, I've found that there's a lot of competition going on in town. I mean, you have Sarasota Concert Association, Artist Series (Concerts of Sarasota), and my view on it is like, “Well, why would I compete with this when I can do something more unique to us?”
So obviously, we still have concerts here, but my goal involves the church partnering. Not just paying someone a fee to come in and do a concert, but also stimulating the local musician economy and hiring our local musicians, giving them work, instead of calling on some group from New York to come in.
How did you get started with music? Do you come from a musical family?
So, I grew up in an evangelical Christian household. My dad, who recently passed away, was an American Baptist minister.
And so, I always joke with people that, since I still work in the church, the number of Sundays I haven't been in church, I can probably count on my fingers. But yeah, I grew up going to Christian schools and everything, so music in Christianity is a big part of it. And Western music, it's all kind of from there.
And so, I was very inspired by the guy that would play piano during chapel, and then also the church where I grew up had a massive pipe organ that spanned the whole front gallery. And my dad used to always say to me, “Sam, don't test it for all it's worth,” because I love playing with things and really pushing their limits and all that. And so, I was really begging my parents to take piano lessons. My dad played a little bit of piano. And my mom can carry a tune, but that's about it. Neither of them had any training. And I guess my dad's mother, my grandmother, I never met her, but she played organ at a church somewhere. So, I guess there's something in the blood.
But, yeah, I started taking piano in second grade from the guy that played in the chapel services. And then in eighth grade is when I switched to organ, because I really wanted to get my hands on that organ and play with all the knobs and switches, so that’s how I got into that. And then, when I was thinking about college and stuff like that, I went to a college prep high school and the academics I thought were kind of tough.
And maybe I should have gone to a trade school or something like that, but it was just kind of the natural thing, “Yeah, I want to keep playing the organ.” And I end up going through school, and the career was born.
What’s your hometown and what city do you live in now?
So, I was born in Danvers, Massachusetts, in the hospital there, but I was raised in Lynn, MA. It’s a medium-sized town on the north shore of Boston. It’s right next to Revere, which is one town up from East Boston, where Logan Airport is.
And it’s an interesting town. Because it’s like a typical Massachusetts town, where it had this big industry that employed the entire town and then it collapsed and then they went through a period of uncertainty and then another one.
And so, you see these old pictures of the church I grew up in, which is this kind of Neo-Gothic, stained-glass thing of all these stereotypical 1960s American families, if you want to think of it that way. But when I was there, it was incredibly multicultural. Oftentimes churches will kind of have their groups. You know, there's the Black church and the Hispanic church and all that.
And this church had someone from like every country, there were no groups. It was a very interesting thing to see, especially coming and doing traditional hymnody. I guess it was what brought all these cultures together---that they could relate to that, something new to them.
I was in youth group. I was the only white kid. There was a lot of Haitian kids that remain lifelong friends. But, yeah, that was the town. I mean, it was, and it's still kind of this cultural mishmash. It's an amazing place, going way back. It has this saying about it: “Lynn, Lynn, the City of Sin. You never come out the way you went in. You ask for water they give you a gin… It's the damnedest city I ever been in.” And apparently this goes back to like Nassau with pirates, and they would come in and just get drunk and party and that reputation sort of carried on, especially when those industries would fail and crime would creep up and all that kind of stuff. And, yeah, like any town it’s forever changing, but it's a cool place.
So what city do you live in now?
We just moved to Sarasota a couple months ago.
Do you have any hobbies that don't have anything to do with music?
Hmm, sort of. I used to work for a digital organ company and learned a lot. Basically, my job there was to help wire consoles. So, inside of an organ console, these days, it's all solid-state electronics, and you're wiring things and everything. Playing with electronics and mechanical things is fun for me. I more or less built my own home practice organ. I took a really old electronic organ, and I chopped it up with a Sawzall, (reciprocating saw) and then wired everything to a circuit board, and the circuit board plugs into a computer, basically making it a MIDI controller, and then you can play on that. And then I have my home computer. I built that, ordered all the parts and put it together. And I kind of like computers and things like that.
But engineering is not in your background or any of that?
No. And I sometimes think if I could go back and do it all over again, maybe I'd be like an electrician or something if I couldn't do music, and that could be fun for me. I don't know. I'm thinking about getting a 3D printer, maybe messing around with that.
Well, let me give you a hint. Some libraries have 3D printers, so you may want to start out by using the library's 3D printer. Temple Terrace Library around here has one, but you may want to call because they have all kinds of stuff. They have borrowing libraries for tools and things.
Wow, that's good for the libraries, for staying relevant like that. That's cool.
So, what advice would you give to someone who has an idea or a young child or something, who wants to be a musician as their career?
I would say it's going to take a lot of hard work. It's not going to be easy. But in terms of more practical advice, Thea (Lobo, his wife, who's a mezzo-soprano and a WSMR Classical Host), and I have talked about this like, schooling is great and getting degrees is great and important, and that kind of instruction. But we found that for both of us, the most important thing to getting us to feel like we're professional musicians is the experience and gigging around, playing with other musicians.
And I jokingly say that the thing that got me to really embrace and demand high quality was the shame I felt when I wasn't prepared enough from my colleagues, and they're like, “What's wrong with this guy?” And I was like, “Oh, wow, this feels terrible.” And I know these days kind of that negative thing would be like, “Oh, come on, let's be nice.” But you can't help it. When you're in that, you feel embarrassed and stuff, and it could discourage people. And I guess I would encourage them to think, if something like that happens, don't hang it up and say, “Forget it, I can't do this.” I mean, every musician has been through the thought of like, “Maybe I'm not cut out for this. I'm terrible.” We all have crippling self-doubt. But don't let it get you down. Use it as motivation to keep at it.
So, you do it because you love it, right? What was it? They say Mozart wrote music because he could not not write music.
True, yeah. Although it's funny you should mention Mozart, because he also wrote music for the money, even though he was like, broke. I only know this because he wrote these mechanical clock organ pieces that a lot of people play on piano. I play the K. 608, which is often played on organ because it has some more notes. And when I've researched something to say before concert, there's these letters that he wrote to Constanze, his wife, and he basically said, “I hate writing these pieces, but the money's good, so I'll keep doing it.”
I don't think he had money management skills at school. That's probably his dad's fault. Yeah, are your girls musical?
They can carry a tune. At one point “Frozen” was the obsession, and they would sing along with that. And more recently, “K-Pop Demon Hunters” is the obsession. And they're learning, of course, both of these films have a lot of chest voice belting, which is kind of difficult for them to do and they're exploring their head voice now. They want to match pitch; they know when they're not on it. We've tried to encourage them to take piano lessons and things like that, and we haven't quite gotten there yet.
They've tried out ballet, and right now, Mina is into horseback riding because of her mother encouraging it as a former horseback rider. But, yeah, they certainly have the mind for it. They've got the ear for it, but I hope someday they might want to get more into it.
Remind me what your daughter's names are?
Mina, who's 7, and then Cecilia, who is 4. Cecilia was named after the patron saint of music, Saint Cecilia.
Let me just get clarification on your role at Redeemer.
So, my official title here is organist, and choirmaster. But for all intents and purposes, I'm the music director of over all things here, and the music series here was called for a long time, “Great Music, Great Space,” but I've done away with that name only because I'm trying to make it less of a concert series. It's still a concert series, but I'm changing the focus.
Do you teach, or are you involved in, I don't know, is there chamber music for organists?
Sort of, yeah. I mean, there's pieces for organ and brass, and obviously, there's organ concertos and things. A few years ago, I did the Poulenc Organ Concerto here, just because I wanted to do it. So I hired a bunch of strings and a conductor did it. I thought about trying to conduct it from the console, but I was like, “You know what, it's my first time. Maybe I shouldn't go overboard here.” Yeah, there's also so many kinds of organs. I mean, there’s ones that are small, or you go to Atlantic City, which has the largest pipe organ in the world in it, and you can do anything. For the Opus 1700, (a Key Chorale concert earlier in 2026), we won't be using the organ that's installed in the church.
We'll be using a continuo organ, which is a box that's probably three-and-a-half feet tall by three-and-a-half feet wide and two feet deep. You open it up, it's just a box full of whistles, and you plug it in, there's a little blower in there, and it just kind of plays nice ensemble blending tones. So, there’s three ranks (sets of pipes) in there, which is kind of a lot, they crammed that all in there. But yeah, we used that organ when we were doing Baroque chamber music last year. It's perfect for that.
Where did that come from?
It's on permanent loan from one of our parishioners, who was a professor of harpsichord at Urbana Champaign and worked in the historical performance department, and she lives in a condo downtown. And one time, I needed something. And she was like, “Oh, yeah, you can use it for that.” I mean, her husband and I wheeled it through downtown Sarasota, because there’s no way to move it really.
So, we're just going down the street wheeling this thing. And then we’re like, “You know what, this doesn't do me any good at my condo. You just leave it here, because it's going to get used here.” And I think it might be the only one in Florida, because a couple months ago, Handel and Haydn (Society), they were coming down from Boston to do their own “Messiah” tour. And they ended up in my inbox because they're like, “We need this organ for this,” and nobody else had one.
So how old is that thing?
It was made in 2006.
