Alfred V. Fedak › Tunes

Alfred V. Fedak is a widely-published and well-known composer of church music. He has over 200 choral and organ works in print, and his hymntunes appear in hymnals and collections in the US, Canada, England, Scotland, New Zealand, China and Japan. Three anthologies of his hymns have been published by Selah Publishing Company: The Alfred V. Fedak Hymnary (1990), Sing to the Lord No Threadbare Song (2001), and God of the Future (2009). Mr. Fedak has earned many awards in organ performance and composition, including the AGO’s prestigious S. Lewis Elmer Award, as well as grants and prizes from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Hymn Society, and the John Ness Beck Foundation. Since 2002 he has received annual composition awards from ASCAP. In 1995 he was named a Visiting Fellow in Church Music at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, and he now serves as a member of the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song (the committee preparing a new hymnal for the PCUSA).

Born July 4, 1953, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Alfred V. Fedak attended the Pingry School and graduated from Hope College in 1975 Alfred V. Fedak is a widely-published and well-known composer of church music. He has over 200 choral and organ works in print, and his hymntunes appear in hymnals and collections in the US, Canada, England, Scotland, New Zealand, China and Japan. Three anthologies of his hymns have been published by Selah Publishing Company: The Alfred V. Fedak Hymnary (1990), Sing to the Lord No Threadbare Song (2001), and God of the Future (2009). Mr. Fedak has earned many awards in organ performance and composition, including the AGO’s prestigious S. Lewis Elmer Award, as well as grants and prizes from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Hymn Society, and the John Ness Beck Foundation. Since 2002 he has received annual composition awards from ASCAP. In 1995 he was named a Visiting Fellow in Church Music at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, and he now serves as a member of the Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song (the committee preparing a new hymnal for the PCUSA).

Born July 4, 1953, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Alfred V. Fedak attended the Pingry School and graduated from Hope College in 1975 with degrees in Organ Performance and Music History. He subsequently earned a Masters’ degree in Organ Performance from Montclair State University and has done additional study at Westminster Choir College (church music), Eastman School of Music (harpsichord continuo), the Institute for European Studies in Vienna, Austria (music history), and in England at the first Cambridge Choral Studies Seminar at Clare College, Cambridge. His organ studies were with Prudence Curtis, Roger Davis, Roger Rietberg, and Jon Gillock. A Fellow of the American Guild of Organists, Mr. Fedak also holds the Guild’s Choirmaster Certificate, and from 1995-2000 served as Director of the AGO’s national Professional Certification Committee. Since 1986 he has been a member of the guild’s national Board of Examiners: his own grade of 95% on the AGO’s Fellowship paperwork remains the highest score ever achieved on that demanding, seven-hour examination since the founding of the Guild in 1896.

Recently called “one of America’s leading church musicians” by The American Organist, Fedak has performed and lectured widely throughout the US, including at national and regional conferences of the AGO and the Hymn Society (of which he is a Life Member). He has composed music on commission for numerous churches, cathedrals, schools, colleges, individuals, community choruses, and for chapters of the AGO, Choristers Guild, and the Organ Historical Society. He has written articles and reviews for The American Organist, The Hymn, Reformed Worship, and Music and Worship.

Fedak has served as organist and choir director for churches and synagogues in the East and Midwest. Currently he serves as Minister of Music and Arts at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Capitol Hill in Albany, New York, where he plays a landmark four-manual, 1929 E. M. Skinner pipe organ. He has taught organ and keyboard harmony at the College of St. Rose, and is a Past Dean of the Eastern New York Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. He also serves as Chapel Organist at Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, is the accompanist for both the Burnt Hills Oratorio Society and the Mohawk Valley Chorus, and appears regularly in concert as harpsichordist with the Capitol Chamber Artists. Al and his wife Susan are the parents of two grown sons.hamber Artists.

Al and his wife Susan are the parents of two grown sons.

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