The 2023 Old West Organ Society Summer Series continues with a performance by Raymond Hawkins. Admission is free; donations are gratefully accepted in support of the Society.
Since beginning his musical training at age ten, Raymond Hawkins has honed his skill at the organ through an active career in both solo performance and sacred music. As a performer, Mr. Hawkins has given recitals at venues across the United States, including the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco and Adolphus Busch Hall at Harvard University. His performance at the 2015 Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina was praised in The American Organist as being “superbly played and registered.”
Since 2019, Mr. Hawkins has served as Director of Music and Organist at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the oldest Episcopal Church in New England still standing on its original site (1714). There, he oversees choral and organ music for weekly Mass, monthly Evensong, and a variety of other occasions. Mr. Hawkins began his career in church music at the age of fourteen as organist at the First Baptist Church of Holly Hill, South Carolina. While studying in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he served as music intern at Augsburg Lutheran Church and subsequently as organist at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church. Mr. Hawkins also serves as Member-at-Large and Newsletter Editor for the Merrimack Valley Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
Mr. Hawkins has also won prizes in a number of regional and national competitions. As a high school junior, he received First Prize and the Hymn-Playing Prize in the 2014 UNCSA/Salem College High School Organ Competition as well as Third Place and the Hymn-Playing Prize in the American Guild of Organists Greater Columbia Chapter Young Organist Competition; the following year he earned Second Place in the same competition. In 2014, he won Second Place in the Senior Division of the Peter Perret Youth Talent Search and consequently performed with the Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestra.
In 2019, Mr. Hawkins completed his undergraduate degree in organ performance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he studied as a Kenan Organ Scholar under Dr. Timothy Olsen and had previously received his high school diploma. Earlier on, he studied organ with Donna Swanson, Angela Kraft Cross, and Porter Remington. Mr. Hawkins has also studied abroad in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, advancing his skills as both musician and language aficionado.
Mr. Hawkins’ particular affinity for the music of French composer, Louis Vierne, led him to celebrate the composer’s sesquicentennial birth year in 2020 by recording Spicy Sauce, an album featuring a selection of Vierne’s organ works. This album, as well as more information about Mr. Hawkins, can be procured on his website, www.raymondhawkinsmusic.com.