Prominent Cape Cod Organists to Perform

This event has been postponed due to inclement weather. The date is now February 15.

As part of a year-long celebration of the 325th anniversary of the founding of First Parish Brewster, four prominent organists from around Cape Cod will perform in a concert at FPBUU on Sunday, February 15, at 2:00 PM.

Join us for a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear our 1861 Holbrook organ, the last to exist in its original state, as played by four exceptional Cape Cod organists/musicians. Throughout its long history, this remarkable instrument has impressed experts and delighted generations of parishioners with its rich, sweet tone. The concert will feature a diverse selection of pieces from the last three centuries in celebration of First Parish Brewster’s 325 years as a congregation.

Suggested donation: $20 at the door.

Our distinguished performers:

• Deborah Gemma, Music Director and Organist at St. Barnabas’s Memorial Episcopal Church, Falmouth
• Marcia Hempel, Music Director and Organist, First Congregational Church of Harwich UCC
• Richard Busch, choral director, composer, 40+ years’ experience as an organist
• Jeff Cutts, Minister of Music, The Church of the Messiah, Woods Hole

First Parish Brewster member Neil Bartholomew will provide short unaccompanied oboe solos as a transition between the organ performances.

More information about the organists and musical selections:

Deborah Gemma is the Director of Music at Saint Barnabas’s Memorial Episcopal Church in Falmouth, where she plays the church’s 1892 Hutchings tracker organ and directs the choir. Educated at The Hartt School of Music/University of Hartford and the Yale School of Music/Institute of Sacred Music, she has served churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts for over 45 years. Deb is a Past Dean of both the Greater Hartford and the Cape Cod and the Islands chapters of the American Guild of Organists. Deb was born and raised in Millis, MA, formerly known as East Medway, home of organ builder Edwin L. Holbrook, who built our organ. 

Marcia Hempel  has been Music Director and Organist at First Congregational Church, UCC, in Harwich Center, since 2012. Before that she lived on Nantucket and was the choir director and organist at the UU church there for many years. She started the Harwich Women’s Chorus in 2013. It has 16 members and performs folk styles and jazz. The pieces she is playing for this program are mostly Nantucket themed: Barbara Elder is an island conductor and composer; Carson Cooman is a summer resident who is a widely recognized composer and is organist at Harvard; “Benefactor” is a piece that Marcia wrote for the memorial service of Ted Anderson, who was minister at the UU Church on Nantucket for 20 years; Michael Schütz is a contemporary German composer, known for blending classical organ with contemporary styles.

Richard Busch is a composer, pianist, choral conductor, and teacher. He is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, and has been a recipient of fellowship grants from the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His music has been performed by the Indianapolis Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Boston’s Collage, the Meridian Quartet, I Cantori di New York, and many community choruses and church choirs, including that of the Church of the Ascension in New York City. A long-time resident of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Mr. Busch served for fifteen years as organist and choirmaster at St. Mary of the Harbour Episcopal Church in Provincetown, for three years at the Federated Church in Orleans, and for eleven years at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Nantucket. From 2004 to 2009 Mr. Busch held the position of Organist and Choirmaster at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, CT. He returned to Cape Cod in 2009 and served from then until 2011 as Director of Music at Christ Church, Harwichport. Along with vocalist Ann Martindale, Richard has performed, as both singer and pianist, a repertoire of classic American songs and jazz standards in venues throughout Cape Cod, Nantucket, and southwest Florida, as well as several engagements at the Metropolitan Room in NYC.

Jeffrey Cutts is currently serving as Minister of Music at Church of the Messiah in Woods Hole, where he has been serving since November of 2025. Prior to his appointment at CoM, Jeffrey served for seven years as Minister of Music at the First Congregational Church of Nantucket, where he established a summer concert series, Concerts on the Hill, founded the Nantucket Summer Festival Choir, a community chorus for summer and year-round residents, and participated in the island’s annual Organ Crawl, celebrating the history of Nantucket’s historic organs. He has written several compositions and arrangements for organ, including his Outkast Suite, which will be partially featured on today’s program. Cutts is also an avid composer of choral music, premiering his first major work, Memoria, with the Nantucket Summer Festival Choir in August of 2025. He holds a Master of Music degree in sacred music and conducting from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ and a Bachelor of Music in voice performance from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.