Nationally-acclaimed organist to perform in Yuba City

Yuba Sutter Arts is proud to announce the third in the new series of community organ concerts being held in collaboration with Marian Metson and First Lutheran Church in Yuba City. The featured organist will be nationally acclaimed musician, Dana Robinson.

The concert will be held on Friday, Oct. 26 at 7:30 p.m. at First Lutheran Church, 850 Cooper Ave., Yuba City. The concert is free, but donations will be accepted for the upkeep of the organ.

Organist, teacher and church musician Robinson is on the faculty of the School of Music at the University of Illinois and is the organist at Grace Lutheran Church in Champaign, Ill. Prior to coming to the University of Illinois, he held teaching appointments at Central College in Iowa and Luther College, and was organist and choirmaster at Trinity Cathedral in Davenport, Iowa.

He performs regularly for chapters of the American Guild of Organists, and for national conventions of the Organ Historical Society and the Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies. In addition to solo performances, he appears regularly in organ duet recitals with Paul Tegels, Professor of Organ at Pacific Lutheran University.

Robinson’s program will include music of the French and German Baroque periods, including Dieterich Buxtehude and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Marian Metson, coordinator of the concert series, was the organist at First Lutheran from 1994-2010. During her tenure at the church, there was a successful concert series which included top organists from around the country. Due to a generous anonymous gift, she has been asked by the church to reinstate the series.

“We were able to collaborate with Chico State where the organ builder had built his first instrument and attract some of the finest organists available,” Metson said. “So now we have an opportunity for our community to once again hear a world class organist playing on a world class instrument right here in Yuba-sutter.” Organist Dana Robinson will perform on Friday at First Lutheran Church in Yuba City. The program will include music from the French and German Baroque periods.

The First Lutheran organ was built by Munetaka Yokota, who went on to build organs at universities in Sweden and in

Rochester and Ithaca, N.Y., in addition to Chico State. Yokota is revered in esoteric organ circles.