Ann Marie Rigler
Organist/Lecturer Ann Marie Rigler is Associate Professor of Music and College Organist at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, where she teaches applied organ, music history, hymnody, and class piano, and plays for weekly chapel services. She previously served on the faculties of the Pennsylvania State University, Wayne State College, the University of Northern Iowa, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Simpson College.

Dr. Rigler maintains an active schedule as a solo recitalist, clinician, adjudicator, and chamber musician, with recital credits at venues throughout the United States. She is currently working on a recording project featuring the new Létourneau organ in the multi-faith Pasquerilla Spiritual Center at Penn State, an instrument and worship setting that have inspired her to specialize in offering recital programs that represent a wide variety of faith traditions. She is also preparing two major lectures on American organ pedagogy topics, to be delivered at the national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Washington, D.C. in July 2010 (“How we got here from there: Trends in pedagogy, 1860-1960”) and the Region III convention in June 2011 (Conversations and Legacies: Exploring late 20th-century American organ pedagogy through oral history”). A solo recitalist for the 2003 national convention of the Organ Historical Society, she has performed with baritone Robert Barefield at national meetings of the College Music Society and the American Guild of Organists, and with trumpeter David Bohnert at the 2001 Region VI convention of the AGO. The third place winner of the AGO National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance in 1992, she has since adjudicated both regional and national tape rounds of NYACOP. As a church organist, she has served parishes of various denominations in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Dr. Rigler earned the B.Mus. degree in Organ Performance from Southern Methodist University, where she received the Dora Poteet Barclay award in organ as a student of Robert T. Anderson. She received the M.S. in Library and Information Science and the M.M. in Musicology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was a University Fellow and held teaching assistantships in organ and music history while studying with Jerald Hamilton. She was a Rahn Scholar at the University of Iowa, from which she earned the D.M.A. in Organ Performance and Pedagogy as a student of Delores Bruch Cannon and Delbert Disselhorst. Her dissertation research on organist John Zundel was supported by grants from the Organ Historical Society American Organ Archive and the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies. Faculty research awards from Wayne State College allowed her to pursue post-graduate harpsichord study with Larry Palmer at Southern Methodist University.

A strong advocate for young organists, Dr. Rigler has served the American Guild of Organists on the national committee for the AGO/Quimby Regional Competitions for Young Organists since 2005, has taught at five Pipe Organ Encounters, and was Faculty Coordinator for the Greater Kansas City chapter’s Pipe Organ Encounter for high school students in June 2009. In addition to co-authoring the script for the videotape, The Organ and You: A Young Person’s Guide to the King of Instruments, she has written articles and reviews for The American Organist, The Diapason, The Journal of Singing, and Music Library Association NOTES. She nurtures her interest in early music through membership in the Southeastern and Midwest Historical Keyboard societies and through occasional performances in the greater Kansas City area with her husband, a violinist/violist who specializes in Baroque music performance.

Web site: www.annmarierigler.com
E-mail: riglera@william.jewell.edu