PORT ANGELES — Holy Trinity Lutheran Church will host organist Manuel Piazza at 7 p.m. Friday.
The concert at the church at 301 E. Lopez Ave. in Port Angeles is free and open to the public. Donated funds will benefit the American Guild of Organists Olympic Peninsula Chapter Scholarship Fund.
The concert is part of an ongoing music series put on at Holy Trinity.
Piazza is the interim associate director of music at Trinity Church in Boston.
In May 2022, he graduated with a master’s from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, where he studied organ repertoire with Martin Jean, improvisation with Jeffrey Brillhart and choral conducting with Dale Adelmann and Gloria Yin.
Piazza developed a passion for sacred music while attending St. Michael’s Choir School in Toronto, where he served as a chorister and began organ studies. He completed his undergraduate studies in Organ Performance at the University of Toronto, studying repertoire with John Tuttle and conducting with Ivars Taurins.
He has also performed in master classes led by organists such as Olivier Latry, William Porter, Stefan Engels, David Briggs, James O’Donnell, Ben van Oosten, Jürgen Essl, Wolfgang Zerer, Christophe Mantoux, Olivier Penin and Fréderic Blanc.
While in Toronto, he served as choir director and organist at Our Lady of Sorrows Roman Catholic Church, organ scholar at Trinity College (University of Toronto), organ scholar at St. James’ Anglican Cathedral, and one of the five organists of St. Michael’s Cathedral Basilica.
From September 2019 to July 2020, he was organ scholar at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall (UK), where he played at Evensong three times a week, accompanying a group of choristers under the direction of Christopher Gray.
After returning to North America, he won first prize in the 2021 Royal Canadian College of Organists’ National Organ Playing Competition. Other awards include the Godfrey Hewitt Memorial Scholarship (RCCO), the Mary Baker Scholarship in Organ Accompanying (Yale Institute of Sacred Music), the Julia R. Sherman Memorial Prize for excellence in organ playing (Yale School of Music) and the Aidan Kavanagh Prize for Academic Achievement (Yale Institute of Sacred Music).
This summer, he will begin a term as assistant director of music at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church in Toronto.
