Organist Joyce Jones Returns to Baylor for a Concert at Truett Seminary

Joyce Jones, Emeritus Professor of Organ at Baylor University, will perform a concert in Paul Powell Chapel at Truett Theological Seminary on Sunday, February 13. This program, which begins at 4:00 p.m., is presented in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the dedication of the Ruffatti organ in Roxy Grove Hall on February 13, 1972. That instrument was the fifth organ at Baylor University for which Dr. Jones played the dedication concert.
During her tenure as Baylor’s Joyce Oliver Bowden professor of organ, she also continued to be in great demand as a concert organist, playing in all fifty states, plus Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Korea, and Japan. Joyce Jones was the only woman organist to play on the opening of the Ruffatti organ at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and the first woman to play in the opening concert series at the Crystal Cathedral.
Dr. Jones has played in such renowned venues at Notre Dame Cathedral, Chartres, the Riverside Church in New York City, and the Mormon Tabernacle, and she was the first woman organist to play at the Grand Teton Music Festival. She has also stayed busy composing and has had nineteen books published.
Her Baylor program will open with music of the great German master Johann Sebastian Bach, his Prelude and Fugue in D major, BWV 532, and three of Bach’s chorale preludes: “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” “Rejoice, Beloved Christians,” and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
Next, Joyce Jones will play her own setting of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”
Two pieces by French composer Jean Langlais will be heard (Fête and Chant de Paix), to be followed by “Twilight at Fiesole” from Seth Bingham’s Harmonies of Florence.
Dr. Jones will also play Capriccio (on the Notes of the Cuckoo) by Richard Purvis and Marcel Dupré’s organ transcription of “In Paradisium” from Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem.
Closing the program will be Dupré’s Variations on a Noël, Op. 20.
This concert is free of charge and open to the public.