MOUNT VERNON — The famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach will fill Cornell College’s King Chapel during college organist Beverly Everett’s lecture and demonstration at 11 a.m. Thursday, March 21, which is Bach’s birthday (1685-1750). Admission is free.
Everett will focus on different features of the King Chapel pipe organ, which was manufactured especially for Cornell by M. P. Möller of Hagerstown, Md., and dedicated in 1967. It has four manuals and 3,800 pipes arranged in 65 ranks. In summer 1999, the operation of the organ was converted to a solid-state computer system.
Everett is assistant conductor of the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra, conductor of the Muscatine Symphony Orchestra and sanctuary organist at Wesley Church in Muscatine. She is an assistant conductor for the orchestra and wind ensemble at Cornell. She has been invited to serve as assistant conductor and guest organist for the Britt Music Festival in Oregon this summer.
She holds degrees from Baylor University and the University of Iowa and was formerly the orchestra director at Midland High School in Midland, Texas, her home state. She spent two consecutive summers at the Aspen Music Festival on scholarship for the conducting seminar and has been a featured performer and clinician for workshops of the American Guild of Organists, the Chorister’s Guild, Carillon Music Festival in Vancouver and International String Workshops in Glasgow, Scotland, and Lyon, France. She has also participated as a conducting apprentice with the Hot Springs Music Festival and the Conductor’s Institute in Beijing, China.