Highlights of the Festival include a special concert by The Gesualdo Six, one of the world’s most celebrated vocal ensembles, and a guest appearance by the renowned British composer and conductor Sir John Rutter. The Gesualdo Six will also lead public workshops with selected participating choirs, offering an exceptional opportunity to work directly with the ensemble.

Participants will be hosted by Cambridge University’s Schola Cantorum, the university’s elite choir whose members are drawn from its 31 colleges. Visiting choirs and individuals will experience the unique atmosphere of Cambridge by staying in college accommodation and dining by candlelight in one of the university’s historic halls.

Each participating choir will perform both a concert in one of the city’s historic churches and a Choral Evensong in a Cambridge college chapel. Individual singers will form a Festival Choir to present similar performances. The Festival will culminate in a grand closing concert of Haydn’s Creation, performed by all participating singers with a professional orchestra in the magnificent setting of St. Alban’s Cathedral, one of Britain’s most beautiful and historic buildings.

Alongside the formal music program, participants will enjoy a variety of cultural and social activities, including a garden buffet dinner, guided tours, singing lessons, punting on the River Cam, tea at the famous Grantchester Orchard, and performances by local ensembles.

For more information and registration details, please visit the Festival’s website: https://www.festivalofchoirs.com/

Members of the University Choir at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, sing during a 2024 Lessons and Carols service at All Saints’ Chapel on campus. Photo: Courtesy of the University of the South

[Episcopal News Service] The student body at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, is religiously diverse, with Episcopalians making up about 20%, but the Episcopal institution holds on to its Anglican identity through its campus traditions, including its popular annual Lessons and Carols services during Advent.

“I think it’s really beautiful that people from all different walks of life can come to Lessons and Carols and, whether they’re religious or not, can feel peace and grounded-ness in the holiday season,” Hattie Robbins, a senior English and environmental sciences student from Chicago, Illinois, told Episcopal News Service. She serves as vice president of Sewanee’s 70-member University Choir.

At least 3,000 students, faculty, staff and community members are expected to attend Sewanee’s three in-person Lessons and Carols services, which will take place at 4 and 7 p.m. CT on Dec. 6 and at 4 p.m. CT on Dec. 7. About 60 members of the University Choir will sing.

Click here to watch a livestream of a Lessons and Carols service at Sewanee.

Lessons and Carols — also known as Nine Lessons and Carols, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, and the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols — is an Anglican worship service traditionally celebrated on or around Christmas Eve. During Lessons and Carols, nine stories from Scripture, including the promise of the Messiah and the birth of Jesus, are read aloud. The service usually includes Christmas carols, hymns and choir anthems.

There are two very similar, yet different, services: Advent and Christmas. The prayers have slight wording changes; some of the readings are different; and the concluding prayer must be a collect particular to Advent or Christmas.

Bishop Edward White Benson, who would become archbishop of Canterbury, created the first service of nine alternating Scripture readings and carols for use in the wooden shed serving as his cathedral in Truro, England, for Christmas Eve 1880. The service was based on a medieval vigil service. Other churches adapted the format, and King’s College, Cambridge, began holding its Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in 1918.

Sewanee’s Lessons and Carols tradition began in 1960.

“For me, Lessons and Carols is about listening for the still voice of God through the reading of the Scriptures, through the music and the liturgical movement of the service that has always spoken,” the Very Rev. Christopher “Chris” Epperson, dean of All Saints’ Chapel, told ENS. “It’s quiet, it’s still and it’s a moment to gather yourself as you prepare for the bedlam of Christmas.”

The hectic Christmas season holds extra meaning in a college setting, as students and professors are busy with final exams and graduation ceremonies in December before the fall semester concludes.

Amid the end-of-semester commotions, however, many Sewanee students and professors still take time to attend a Lessons and Carols service.

Members of the University Choir at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, light candles before a 2024 Lessons and Carols service at All Saints’ Chapel on campus. Photo: The University of the South

“As a student, I have a crazy busy schedule and choir practice three times a week preparing for Lessons and Carols, but even though rehearsals can be kind of a blur at times, they’re honestly some of the most peaceful moments I have at school,” said Robbins, a lifelong Episcopalian whose home parish is the Church of the Holy Spirit in Lake Forest, Illinois. “As we light our candles and get in line as the service is about to start, an immense calm comes over all of us, and it’s so wonderful and amazing.”

Blake Burgiss, a sophomore neuroscience major from Raleigh, North Carolina, told ENS he feels the same, and though he is a Missouri Synod Lutheran, participating in the traditional Anglican services as a chorister has strengthened his faith.

“Lessons and Carols has brought me closer to the Lord through music,” said Burgiss, who leads the University Choir’s tenor section. “These services have helped me see the teachings in this new light, because the music does this great job of explaining the lessons. … The emphasis that music can have on worship can further our understanding of what we know of Scripture.”

Burgiss said he would encourage his home parish and other non-Anglican churches to begin a Lessons and Carols tradition.

“I think it’s a beautiful opportunity for any church to bring the community together and to allow the Lord to be seen in the community in that context,” he said.

For Geoffrey Harris Ward, Sewanee’s organist and choirmaster, the “ebb and flow” of reading from Scripture between singing the choral anthems and hymns enhances the learning experience. Beginning the services in silence and darkness and with the choir processing from the back to the front of the chapel, holding lit candles singing a cappella, also sets the tone for both the audience and the musicians.

“It’s embracing the feel of the season of Advent and waiting for the Lord, whose day is near. It’s significant,” Ward told ENS. “We have students in the choir who are certainly questioning their faith identity, but traditions like Lessons and Carols are planting seeds for everyone not just to enjoy and appreciate the worship experience in the moment, but also so that they continue the process of growth in terms of not only their academics and musical ability, but also their faith.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

Cantate Usquam Pilgrim Singers, a traveling choir based in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, sings with the congregation at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Blairsville, Pennsylvania. Photo: Courtesy of Michael Salmon

[Episcopal News Service] The Diocese of Pittsburgh, though based in a large city, has many small churches in rural areas of southwestern Pennsylvania with no music program. To help bring music to those congregations, a group of volunteer chorists, called the Cantate Usquam Pilgrim Singers, will travel to sing during weekend worship services for free.

“I think music is an incredibly important part of worship because it can help support the lessons of the week. …It adds a different kind of vibrancy to the text,” Michael Salmon, Cantate Usquam’s founder, told Episcopal News Service. “There’s an extraordinary feeling when it comes to singing together.”

Salmon, a parishioner and singer at Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, said he was inspired to form a traveling church choir after learning about a similar ministry in England. Cantate Usquam, meaning “singing anywhere” in Latin, was founded in December 2024 and has already served multiple churches throughout the Diocese of Pittsburgh. The choir also has served nearby Presbyterian and Lutheran churches.

About 7-10 chorists sing in Cantate Usquam during weekend services, but the choir, which has 16 members, is recruiting additional volunteers.

“We need more basses!” Penny Anderson, a singer in the choir, told ENS.

Cantate Usquam will sing

any time of the year except for Holy Week, Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas services.

While Salmon leads rehearsals and repertoire planning, Anderson organizes dates and logistics with the churches that request Cantate Usquam’s appearances.

“Whether it’s an urban church or a rural church, it doesn’t make a difference. All churches should have music opportunities,” Anderson said.

The repertoire varies depending on the week’s Scripture readings, instrument availability, church size and requests from the recipient congregations. Requests range from traditional hymns and classical music to gospel music. Sometimes the choir will sing a capella, and other times the choir will sing with accompaniment if a piano, organ or keyboard are available. Parishioners are always welcome to sing with the choir or play an instrument.

The choir sometimes travels as far as an hour’s drive from Pittsburgh to sing at rural-area churches. Recently, Cantate Usquam traveled 50 miles southeast to Scottdale to sing with the congregation at St. Bartholomew Trinity Episcopal Church during a Saturday evening worship service for the second time. The church has a part-time organist who isn’t available to perform every weekend.

The Rev. Cynthia “Cindy” Gainer, deacon-in-charge at St. Bartholomew Trinity, told ENS that when the organist is unavailable, she plays recorded music from her phone but only for the processional and recessional hymns.

“Being that I’m clergy, I can’t do much more than that because I’m very busy during the service, and I can’t be going back and forth pressing buttons on my phone. It interrupts the flow of the service,” she told ENS.

Gainer said she requested a visit from Cantate Usquam after reading about the choir in the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s Grace Happens newsletter. Its presence, she said, is a “real treat” for St. Bartholomew Trinity’s small congregation.

“This choir has such a range of vocal talents. We appreciated that they worked with us; they’re not a performance choir,” Gainer said. “Cantate Usquam is a choir that uplifts the congregation and enhances the liturgy. …We wish they could come more often.”

Salmon said Cantate Usquam is booked for the rest of 2025 and is accepting requests for 2026.

“For a lot of people in the choir, traveling longish distances to these small parishes is a big chunk of their day,” Salmon said. “We’ll mingle with the congregations after the service before driving home. …But these congregations are so grateful, and we’re grateful to them, too.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

This year’s report includes:

• a pay and benefits overview broken down by position time
• wedding, funeral, and substitute musician per service rates
• demographic data on gender identity, race and ethnicity, and age
• job characteristic data broken down by education, experience, church budget, and average Sunday attendance
• regional data including U.S. states with at least 5 respondents in any salary category
• a chart that imitates the former “Salary Guidelines” by layering education and experience with position time
• an interactive tool that can filter data specific to one’s employment status

The data contained in this report is for informational purposes only. While AAM always hopes that its members will be fairly and adequately compensated for their work, AAM makes no specific recommendations to any hiring institution regarding compensation and the results of the survey in no way bind or commit AAM members or their employers in reaching agreements regarding compensation and benefits.

• A successful Mentoring Institution applicant must:
  • Abide by The Episcopal Church’s fair employment practices (including but not limited to withholding taxes, FICA, contribution toward health insurance),
  • Make a commitment to match or exceed AAM’s salary Grant ($20,000),
  • Provide benefits to the Intern, including health insurance, in parity with other full-time lay employees within the Mentoring Institution,
  • Provide housing to the Intern. Housing must be safe, private, and within a reasonable commuting distance from the Mentoring Institution.

• In return, AAM commits to:
  • make a Salary Grant in the amount of $20,000,
  • Underwrite an additional $7,500 (paid directly to the Mentoring Institution) for costs related to the Intern’s benefits and/or housing.
  • Reimburse up to $3,000 for expenses related to interviewing the final Internship candidates,
  • Provide an invitation to play a recital, complimentary registration, up to six nights’ accommodation at the Conference hotel, and up to $500 to cover transportation costs to attend the annual AAM Conference in the year concluding the Internship, provided the ten-month term has been fully served and the Conference is held in the United States,
  • Provide a $300 travel subsidy (paid directly to the Intern) to play the AAM Gerre Hancock Intern Recital, hosted each January at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.
  • Provide a waiver for any AAM membership dues owed by the Intern during the Internship year.

For more information and to apply by October 15th, please visit www.anglicanmusicians.org/internship. Contact Stephen White (internship@anglicanmusicians.org), Chair of the Internship Committee, with any questions.

Episcopalians gather at the Aug. 28-31, 2025, Wild Goose Festival, an annual outdoor event rooted in progressive Christianity. The festival in Harmony, North Carolina, encompasses art, music, storytelling, theater, meditation, theological education and more. Photo: Courtesy of Tommy Dillon

[Episcopal News Service] A group of Episcopalians from several dioceses spent their Labor Day weekend in fellowship with hundreds of spiritually minded people at the Wild Goose Festival in Harmony, North Carolina.

The outdoor event, held annually since 2011 except 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, is rooted in progressive Christianity and social justice. Like the Greenbelt Festival in England that inspired it, the Wild Goose Festival encompasses art, live music, storytelling, theater, meditation, theological education and more. Musicians who have previously performed at The Wild Goose Festival include Christian rock band Jars of Clay, Amy Grant, the folk-rock duo Indigo Girls and more.

“Throughout the years, the festival has changed in different ways, but it just keeps unfolding,” the Rev. Tommy Dillon, rector of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, told Episcopal News Service. “Some say it was inspired by the Celtic image of the Holy Spirit, which is a wild, untamed goose, reminding us that God calls us to movement, freedom and having surprise encounters. That’s what the Wild Goose Festival is – people come here to have transformational movements.”

The Episcopal tent, informally called “Camp Thurible,” at the 2025 Wild Goose Festival in Harmony, North Carolina. The tent, which featured the Episcopal and Progress Pride flags, included information about The Episcopal Church and its stances on social justice, LGBTQ+ inclusion, creation care and peacemaking. Photo: Tommy Dillon

Dillon has served as a board member of the Wild Goose Festival since 2016. The Rev. Joy Carrol Wallis – one of the first women ordained as a priest in the Church of England who was the inspiration for Geraldine Granger, the main character of the BBC sitcom “The Vicar of Dibley” – is chair of the board of directors. 

From Aug. 28-31, festivalgoers participated in information sessions and activities addressing theological perspectives on various topics ranging from uplifting Indigenous voices in church, neurodivergence and LGBTQ+ ministries to addressing Christian nationalism and the death penalty in the United States.

Worship services took place every day, including a Eucharist led by Dillon. Other Episcopalians volunteered to lead daily morning prayer and compline worship.

Even though the festival is Christian-focused, all faith backgrounds are welcome to attend. Melissa Rau, a lay leader in the Parrish-based Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida, told ENS, for example, that her camping neighbor is atheist, “and he looks forward to going to the Goose every year.”

“He might be one of the most incredibly Christian people I’ve ever met in that he shows up, like Jesus, to everyone and will intentionally build connections with people who are different,” Rau said. “I feel like the Goose is a safe place for all people to show up to one another as their full, generous, engaging selves.”

Rau, Dillon and several other Episcopalians set up an Episcopal tent informally called “Camp Thurible,” featuring the Episcopal and Progress Pride flags, to provide festivalgoers information about The Episcopal Church and its stances on social justice, LGBTQ+ inclusion, creation care and peacemaking. The Rev. Leeann Culbreath, a priest in the Savannah-based Diocese of Georgia, is in charge of organizing the tent and volunteers every year.

“Honestly, the Episcopal tent would not function nearly as smoothly – or with as much joy – without [Culbreath’s] leadership and dedication,” Dillon said.

Several Episcopal seminaries and dioceses sponsor the tent every year.

Every night, the Episcopalians running the tent gave away cupcakes to welcome everyone. One Episcopal newcomer gave away 200 handmade cards with hand-drawn angels.

“We had something for everybody. … It was a great way to spark conversations with like-minded people,” Cheryl Duplechain, a vestry member at St. Margaret’s in Baton Rouge, told ENS. “Witnessing people share their faith through their music, their art expressions – this festival is an escape from the real world that we live in, where people are judged and looked down upon and our politics are horrific. But everyone truly is welcome here.”

The festival also included opportunities for meditation and exercise, such as reiki and yoga sessions. Many festivalgoers participated in dance parties, including a silent disco party, where they listened and danced to music through wireless headphones.

Dillon said the board intentionally designs the festival’s programming to ensure that at least half of the musicians, art performers and speakers are women and people of color.

“We’re really trying to make sure everyone feels represented,” Dillon said. “We want people to come and to be reenergized for ministries and have fresh ideas to take back to their home parishes.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

The Edinburgh effort is part of the National Schools Singing Programme that has the noted composer John Rutter as its patron.

Duncan Ferguson, the cathedral’s director of music, said, “We are delighted to be working with several Edinburgh primary schools to provide weekly singing to children in their school classes, developing a culture of excellence in singing at schools and in the wider community. The educational, social and health benefits of regular choral singing are well known.”

In addition to the school classes, after-school choirs are being formed that will draw together pupils from different schools and backgrounds, offering additional opportunities for practice and performance at an exceptional standard.

The singing programme builds on recent efforts by the cathedral to share its expertise in choral singing. The cathedral has led singing workshops in several primary schools in recent years, and the weekly singing programme ran in one school in 2024–2025.

To enable the expansion and delivery of the full programme, Katrina MacKinnon has been appointed as St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral’s new schools choral director. Born in Canada, MacKinnon holds a master’s degree in choral conducting from the Liszt Academy in Budapest and is an established singer, conductor, pianist and leader of children’s choirs. Before beginning this new role she said, “I am thrilled to bring the joy of choral singing to primary school children across Edinburgh. I am inspired by the work the National Schools Singing Programme does throughout the U.K. The next generation has discovered the unifying power of choral music.”

The cathedral’s provost, the Very Rev. John Conway, said he welcomes this addition to the cathedral’s music programme, which already includes its choristerships for boys and girls aged 9–14, regular children’s singing events in the cathedral and the cathedral youth choir.

He said, “The Edinburgh Schools Singing Programme enables us to take the musical training and excellence that is at the heart of the cathedral’s life out into the wider community of Edinburgh’s schools. We are pleased to make this opportunity available to Edinburgh’s young children to discover the joy of singing together. We look forward to joining many others in hearing the music-making that Katrina enables across our city.”

The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday translated into Arabic. Photo: Courtesy of Halim Shukair

[Episcopal News Service] For the Rev. Halim Shukair, priest-in-charge at Mother of the Savior Episcopal Church, an Arabic-speaking parish in Dearborn, Michigan, being able to worship in one’s native language can help welcome people looking for a church home. That’s why he and the Rev. Charbel Zgheib, pastor of Salam Arabic Lutheran Church in Brooklyn, New York, collaborated to translate liturgies into Arabic.

“The Episcopal Church is working toward being inclusive and reflective of our very diverse communities in the U.S., and having different translations of the liturgy is a kind of church planting,” Shukair told Episcopal News Service.

About 70 parishioners – double from 2021 – are members of Mother of the Savior, which is housed within Christ Episcopal Church, and the congregation is still growing. Salam Arabic Lutheran Church has almost 100 parishioners.

Shukair, an immigrant from Lebanon, began translating liturgies in 2018 with the help of Wassim Wehbe, who was then a graduate student in Arabic. Three years later, Zgheib started working with Shukair on the project.

Zgheib told ENS that when he immigrated to the United States from Lebanon, he noticed that resources for Arabic-speaking Christians were “very limited” and had no structure around the liturgical year.

“Since the [Evangelical Lutheran Church in America] is in full communion with The Episcopal Church, Halim and I agreed that we should work together to make people more comfortable in worshiping in their own language,” Zgheib said. That way, “the churches will be more accessible to those who are already worshiping with us and those who don’t know about us yet, but we can now reach out to them more easily.”

The Book of Common Prayer’s Eucharistic Prayer D translated into Arabic. Photo: Courtesy of Halim Shukair

The two priests translated the Book of Common Prayer’s Holy Eucharist Rite II and parts of Evangelical Lutheran Worship, the ELCA’s primary liturgical and worship guidebook. They also produced Arabic-language resources for seasonal liturgical bulletins, key feast days, baptisms, marriages and funerals.

The work wasn’t a straightforward word-for-word translation of the English texts. Arabic is the official or co-official language in 22 countries – all located in the Middle East or North Africa – and they all have their own dialect. Shukair and Zgheib both said that they had to contextualize the liturgical structures and terminologies in a universal way that every native Arabic reader could understand culturally and linguistically. The priests translated the liturgies into Fusha, also known as Modern Standard Arabic.

“There are big differences in the way we speak in our own dialects … but what unites us all is Fusha Arabic is the official written language in every Arab country, and it’s taught in all Arab schools,” Shukair said.

The growing need for Christian resources in Arabic reflects the growing Arab American population, with the number quadrupling since the U.S. Census first measured ethnic origin in 1980. The Arab American population grew nearly 30% between 2010 and 2022. Today, about 3.7 million people of Arab descent live in the United States, 1.2 million of whom are immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

Michigan has the largest Arab American population by percentage in the United States. In 2023, Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, became the first Arab-majority U.S. city with about 55% of the population claiming Arab ancestry.

Even though the Middle East and North Africa are predominantly Muslim regions, most Arab Americans – an estimated 63-77% – identify as Christians.

Zgheib said having liturgies available in Arabic is also a way for The Episcopal Church and the ELCA to respect Arab cultures and traditions while “creating something new for everyone.”

“People want to feel connected to their origins and not like they have betrayed their cultures. This is very important, especially for immigrants,” he said. “We are creating familiarity to help people worship God and give them a more engaged spiritual experience with room for openness and growth.”

In 2024, the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit hosted its first bilingual Arabic and English service using the liturgies and bulletins translated by Shukair and Zgheib.

“It was wonderful. Everyone felt like they belonged,” Shukair said. “Bishop [Bonnie] Perry and the Diocese of Michigan have been so supportive with this work. It is my hope that all of The Episcopal Church will encourage more translation work and encourage dioceses to start reaching out to the Arab and Middle Eastern Christians. … Diversity is wonderful.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.

St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washington DC, Trinity Sunday 2025, Rev. Yoimel Gonzalez Hernandez presiding.

St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church, Washing­ton DC, has begun using Services A & B from Rite 4: An Experimental Liturgy for the Eucharist, Based on the Book of Common Prayer.

St. Stephen’s began introducing the Rite 4 texts into its English-language services on Trinity Sunday 2025. Rector Yoimel Gonzalez Hernandez commented, “As a parish long known for Christian witness and liturgical reform, we are pleased and grateful that the Bishop has allowed us to experiment with this inclusive- and expansive-language liturgy. We hope to broaden the St. Stephen’s worship experience, to offer useful feedback, and perhaps also to develop a Spanish-language version of Rite 4.”

Meticulously updating the Book of Common Prayer, Rite 4 offers inclusive, graceful texts and a flexible, modular framework for the Eucharist liturgy of the Episcopal Church. The Base Texts update historical BCP forms in an inclusive but fairly traditional idiom, while the Contemporary Texts are further adapted to contemporary language and sensibilities.

Services A & B present the Rite 4 texts under the rubrics of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Service A presents the Contemporary Texts under the rubrics of Rite II, while Service B presents the Base Texts under the rubrics of Rite I. Either service may be used alone or as a menu of alternative texts to selectively replace the corresponding texts in a Rite II or Rite I service. In addition, correspond­ing words or phrases that differ in Services A & B may usually be exchang­ed between them, allowing limited customization of individual Rite 4 texts.

St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church / San Esteban y la Encarnación, Washington DC, is a diverse, welcoming church community that feeds the spirit and the body in building the presence of God through worship, service, learning, and striving for justice.  St. Stephen’s was the first racially integrated Episcopal church in DC; the first in the nation where a woman pub­lic­ly presided at the Eucharist; and the instigators of the first same-sex holy union cere­mony. Worship includes English- and Spanish-language services.  Loaves & Fishes, St. Stephen’s main service ministry since 1968, provides 250 meals each Saturday, Sunday, and federal holiday.

Trinity Press is a small independent publisher located in Washington DC. Rite 4: An Experimen­tal Liturgy for the Eucharist, Based on the Book of Common Prayer was developed by J.A. Frazer, a lay member of St. Stephens. Publication is expected in late 2025 — but until then you can down­­load free PDF booklets with the current forms of the Rite 4 texts at www.TrinityPress.org.

Renée will utilize the grant to attend the 2025 Cambridge Summer Choral Summer Course. She writes, “I am pleased and grateful to be the recipient of the 2025 James Litton Grant for Choral Training. This grant will enable me to attend the Cambridge Choral Summer Course this July to learn from the best choral conductors of our time, observe the finest Anglican choirs in their element, and receive concentrated one-on-one instruction as a singer and director. I hope to grow as a choral leader so I can share my knowledge and experience with my home church and the Association of Anglican Musicians. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect capstone to my sabbatical time!”

The James Litton Grant for Choral Training honors the late James Litton, one of the co-founders of the Association of Anglican Musicians and a generational leader in church and choral music. Its purpose is to aid musicians in developing their own choir training skills, building a chorister program for young singers, or for another endeavor which lives into the spirit of creating excellent choral experiences within the Episcopal Church. The Litton Grant is an annual program for which tax-deductible contributions may be made to www.anglicanmusicians.org/litton.

Renée Rybolt is the Director of Music at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Houston Texas. In the nine years Renée has held the position, she has increased the size of the parish choir, instituted new traditions of choral liturgies such as evensong, compline, and lessons and carols, and has hosted world class musicians and ensembles at St. Mark’s to share with her community. She had the privilege of leading music for her diocese as traditional music coordinator and conductor for the Episcopal Diocese of Texas Clergy Conference in 2022 as well as Diocesan Council Worship Services in 2023 and 2024. Renée frequently sings with renowned Houston-area ensembles and throughout the United States as a choral artist and soloist.