Bad news: the music school at Northwestern University is closing down its organ program, which I understood to be one of the best. It will be a real blow to church music, one of the few really dynamic areas of classical music nowadays. And it's hard to understand... the resources necessary for a program like this amount to one single professorship, possibly part-time and likely attached to the piano faculty. The cost of practice organs is almost certainly sunk.
(Part of the reason I mention this is that I actually know two of the people in the article: Doug Cleveland, the organ prof who just left, used to be the asst organist at the church I grew up in; and Nick Fennig, who I hope will get to finish his degree, was a chorister there. Also, I don't think I've mentioned this before here, but in high school I was the organist at this church for a while.)
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