JoanDeVeeDixon.com

Last night's concert by Dr. Joan DeVee Dixon was nothing short of WONDERFUL! Her whole style and approach to performing are so refreshing and upbeat. People were not just inspired or soothed, they were uplifted and actually had FUN!

The Rev. Allan Weatherholt, St. Thomas, Hancock, Maryland

Thank you for your part in making the 50th Anniversary of the WAMSO Young Artist Competition so special. You were a joy to work with, and your concert was not just exceptional, it was inspirational!

Wendy Wenger, Executive Director, Wenger Corporation Foundation, Owatonna, Minnesota

Thank you so very much for the wonderful gift of music last evening. "Let praises ring!" and they did! I loved the program you played! It was the most original I'd ever heard. Rave reviews from all of our folks!

Kraig Windschitl, Organist, Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota

What a wonderful day we had on Sunday. Your presence and participation as well as leadership in worship made it a special time, a holy time, for all of us. Your concert was enjoyable, a good mix of favorites that were appealing to all. I have had people call or stop by all day telling me how much they enjoyed your concert. Please make a point of coming back to Oakland. Consider this your standing invitation to play here whenever it is possible. It will be our joy to have you back.

Sheldon Timmerman, Oakland Baptist Church, Rock Hill, South Carolina

Thank you for one of the best recitals I have heard in my 20 years of working with the recitals. It was absolutely fantastic!! We all enjoyed your outgoing personality and the notes that you added to the program. I hope you will be able to come back within the next couple years. I had two different people ask me already when we were going to have you back. Thank you once again for a wonderful, entertaining and relaxing afternoon.

Nadine West, Director of the Sunday School Series, Montauk, Iowa

Stompin at St. Mikes
If you thought organ music was just hymns, Bach and Phantom of the Opera (the old Lon Chaney horror movie, not the Andrew Lloyd Webber dripfest), Joan DeVee Dixon aims to disabuse you. Her new CD, Raise the Roof! includes Donizetti and Just a Closer Walk with Thee, but also such unorthodox selections as the Rimsky-Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee, Scott Joplin and Up She Rises (a.k.a. What shall we do with the drunken sailor?). Dixon, who made her professional debut with Minnesota Orchestra back in the Neville Marriner days and has since performed at venues including Westminster Abbey and St. Marks Cathedral, Venice, returns to the Twin Cities to perform at 3pm today at a CD-release party, on the 48 rank Reuter organ at St. Michaels Lutheran Church in Bloomington.

by Judy Arginteanu, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Thanks so much for a lovely evening! What grand music and exquisite playing. I most appreciate, I think, the way that you make every conceivable sound that an instrument can make come alive! Again, thank you!

The Rev. Dr. Margee Iddings, Executive Director, Rising Phoenix Retreat Center, Flintstone, Maryland

I had the great honor of helping to sponsor a concert by Dr. Joan DeVee Dixon. In almost 40 years of working with the highest rated organists, I can say that Dr. Dixon ranks as second to none in her command of the organ. She has an ability to get into the composers psyche to interpret the music so that all can appreciate it. Our church has a twelve rank pipe organ that has been upgraded with a three manual Allen digital console and forty digital stops blended to match the pipes. Even though it was Joans first experience with such an instrument, she quickly mastered it and made it sound like 50 pipe ranks. An added delight to her concert was that she brought along The Laurel Brass which is a fine group of musicians of Symphony Hall quality. When the evening concert ended, we all left wanting more.

Virgil Cannarsa, Evangelical Lutheran Church, Duncansville, Pennsylvania

Oxford Town Hall, England, houses one of the few remaining Father Willis Organs still in its original state. It was built in 1897 and as such does not have any of the electrical settings you find on modern instruments. As a result, anyone coming to play this instrument faces a real challenge. A series of organ concerts is held every year between March and September and features the finest players.

Dr. Joan DeVee Dixon gave a very original and exciting program as a part of her Concert Tour of England. It was just magical! The program started with her arrangements from The Sound of Music. This suite demonstrated not only the wonderful sounds of this instrument (and how versatile it is) but also the wonderful feeling and dexterity of her style of playing. This was followed by several psalm settings by American composer Emma Lou Diemer. Dr. Dixon has made it one her aims to commission and record the Psalms of Dr. Diemer. All were played with a true feeling for the music and also used the registration of the organ to its best advantage. The program ended with a splendid assortment of spirituals by various American composers. Again, these were extremely well done, both with dutiful reflection and occasional humour. The recital finished with a very lively rendition of the Toccata from the 5th Symphony of Widor.
The audience thoroughly enjoyed the program and Dr. Dixon was immediately reengaged for next season.

Dougie Fairhurst, Director, Oxford Town Hall Concert Series, England

EXCITING ORGAN CONCERT. At first glance at the program, the concert-goers could not help but notice the almost complete absence of famous organ composers. The exception was Felix Mendelssohn, in whose Sonata No. 3 the chorus AUS TIEFER NOT moved from a soft beginning to a powerful conclusion. Sonata No. 17 by Josef Rheinberger was readily appreciated by the audience. Rheinberger wrote pleasing music and the church choir of Appenzell has one of his Masses in its repertoire. Then came several contemporary works by American composers. Eight movements were heard from the Partita on St. Anne by Paul Manz in which every conceivable capability of the organ was called forth, from soft to magnificent, from playful to pompous. Meditation on the Spirit by Stephen Paulus meditated with great clarity upon the Triumph. It was really exciting. Next came five liturgical psalms by Emma Lou Diemer, beginning with Psalm Sunday and ending with Trinity Sunday. It was fascinating how the composer creatively combined the ancient text with appropriate music. Through the compositional handling of Emma Lou Diemer, the psalms rose to a new character in modern idiom to win new acceptance from and relevance to the contemporary audience. At the conclusion of the concert, the organist played some American Spirituals, in which themes were skillfully and beautifully interwoven. The concert-goers in the Parish Church of Appenzell responded with hearty applause for the masterful playing of the internationally famous interpreter of music, Joan DeVee Dixon.

Louise Doerig, Appenzeller Volksfreund, Appenzell, Switzerland

Emma Lou Diemers Psalms for organ are melodically inventive, rhythmically diverse and beautifully expressive of the lyrical poetry in the psalms. Joan DeVee Dixon uses the resources of the 39-rank Reuter Great Hosanna organ at the University of the Ozarks to great advantage. Her registrations are wonderfully varied, and her technique is superior. She plays comfortably with this particular organ. Diemers collaboration with Dixon in this first volume, of what is hoped will be a complete series of psalm settings, is a welcome contribution to the recorded liturgical organ literature.

Jeanne Ellison Shaffer, IAWM Journal, 2001

This is no ordinary service music! From the predominantly meditative tone of the Psalms for Organ to the thrilling and dramatic close of Psalm 121 for Organ, Brass, and Percussion, Dr. Diemer has provided a wide array of moods to accompany our progress through the liturgical seasons. Organist Joan DeVee Dixon and the Emmanuel Brass are likewise inspired to eloquence, and the recording engineer, architect, and organ-builder have combined forces to provide a most admirable blend of brilliance, clarity, and resonance. The composers presence at the recording sessions and assistance with interpretation and organ registrations is acknowledged in the program notes, giving these discs an air of authenticity in addition the their many other fine qualities. Strongly recommended for church musicians looking for something a little different, as well as for the general listener.

Jennifer Kolmes, The American Organist, August 2000

Here in these miniatures, Diemer shows herself a master of many styles from mellow romantic to jagged contemporary; particularly engaging are the dancing Psalm 108, the slightly jazzy Psalm 26, and the toccata-like Psalm 2. All are sensitively interpreted by Dixon on the Great Hosanna organ at the University of the Ozarks in Arkansas, and the recording as a whole is a nice introduction to a versatile mainstream composer who has contributed much interesting and worthwhile literature to both the organ recitalist and the average church organist.

Barbara Owen, The American Organist, November 2001

Joan DeVee Dixon pulls extraordinary sounds from an organ. On Saturday night, concertgoers heard bees, a polka, Variations on Three Blind Mice, and all sorts of nautical sound effects. We heard truly virtuosic organ playing on the marvelously renovated Bedford United Methodist Church organ.

The concert began with a surprisingly peppy Great Offertory by Donizetti. It sounded almost like carousel music, and Dr. Dixons program notes explained that a theatrical air permeated many early 19th century pieces. The concert continued with a lovely organ arrangement of the familiar Largo section of Dvoraks New World Symphony. It was followed by an extremely buzzy Flight of the Bumbleebee that sounded unnervingly like a swarm had arrived, as well as a polka in tribute to Dvoraks summer in Spillville, Iowa. Three Blind Mice included many clever musical variations that had us all chuckling, especially since each variation was introduced by a chime (variation number one had one chime, variation number two had two chimes, and so on).

The first half of the program ended with a major concert piece called Fantasy and Faith at Oxford, commissioned by Oxford, dedicated to Dr. Dixon, and composed by Emma Lou Diemer. It is a challenging, dramatic, and beautiful piece based on the classic hymn Jerusalem (remember Chariots of Fire?) and weaving in a tunes from the Harry Potter films, shot in part at Oxford. Dr. Dixon performed it with great skill and dramatic sensitivity.

The second half of the program began with five hymns and spirituals, the last two arranged in the style of New Orleans jazz. All of these familiar songs sounded fresh and energized, but at the same time reverent. I enjoyed particularly Just a Closer Walk with Thee, which Dr. Dixon arranged after she attended the jazz funeral of a longtime member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans. We could almost see the band members dancing down the street celebrating the joy of going to heaven.

The very unusual Stoptime Rag of Scott Joplin was next, different because we the audience were urged to stomp our feet and clap our hands along with the music as was done at the time the piece was written. It was certainly a noisy, fun organ version.

The concert ended with the very dramatic Toccata from Widors famous Symphony No.5. It is a piece that is deservedly famous, because it is such a pleasure to hear the power and sweep of this wonderful instrument performed by a superbly talented musician such as Joan DeVee Dixon.

But she was not done. She played two encores that were arrangements of familiar sea songs; both were chock full of sly, amusing, and totally unrelated themes such as Here Comes the Bride. We laughed our way out of the sanctuary.

Nancy MacRae, Schellsburg, Pennsylvania