About this Artist
JANETTE FISHELL holds degrees in organ performance from Indiana University and Northwestern University; her teachers include Wilma Jensen, Wolfgang Rübsam, Richard Enright, Anita Werling, Robert Byrd, and Clyde Holloway with further coaching on Baroque and German Romantic repertoire with Ludger Lohmann. Named Young Organist of the Year by Keyboard Arts, Inc. while still an undergraduate, Dr. Fishell is a recitalist and teacher of international standing. She has performed in many of the world’s greatest concert venues including Suntory Hall, Tokyo; King’s College, Cambridge; Berlin’s Schauspielhaus; the Liszt Academy, Budapest; and the Prague Spring Festival; she has been a featured recitalist and lecturer at six national conventions and six regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. Her solo recitals for the 2006 national convention of the AGO in Chicago were critically acclaimed as “flawless” and a convention highlight. The author of numerous articles and a book on service playing published by Abingdon Press, she is widely recognized as a leading authority on the organ music of Czech composer Petr Eben.
Her numerous compact disc recordings include performances of the music of Marcel Dupré, Petr Eben, and J.S. Bach as well as duet literature performed with her husband, British organist Colin Andrews. Pas de Dieu: Music Sublime and Spirited, a recording of French Romantic repertoire and the world premiere of Frank Ferko’s Livre d’Orgue, was released by Loft Recordings in July 2006, the premiere recording on C. B. Fisk opus 126. She has been featured in live radio broadcasts worldwide, including recitals for the BBC from St. Marylebone Church, London, NHK, Tokyo, and Czech Radio. A frequent adjudicator, she has been tutor and artist four times at the Oundle International School for Young Organists and a judge for the recorded rounds of the National Competition for Young Artists sponsored by the American Guild of Organists. Most recently she served on the recorded round panel of the Canadian International Organ Competition (Montreal) and the upcoming Longwood Gardens Organ Competition (Philadelphia).
Dr. Fishell is Professor of Organ and Chair of the Organ Department at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, where she teaches a full studio of organ majors. From 1989 to 2008 she headed the Organ Performance and Sacred Music degree programs at East Carolina University and was Director of Music/Principal Organist at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, Greenville, NC, where she remains Director of Music Emerita. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at Christ Church (Episcopal) Cathedral, Indianapolis. At its most recent conclave the alumni of the Jacobs School of Music bestowed upon her the 2102 Oswald Gleason Ragatz Distinguished Alumni Award.
Dr. Fishell’s commitment to the creation and sustenance of excellence and creativity in organ performance and sacred music has led to a variety of projects: she founded the East Carolina Religious Arts Festival, and was pivotal in the design and fundraising for the C. B. Fisk opus 126 pipe organ that functions both as the organ for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Greenville, NC, and the major teaching and performance instrument for East Carolina University School of Music. She has received numerous commissions for choral compositions and hymn tunes, some of which are featured on Love Bade Me Welcome: Music from St. Paul’s, and she is a regular contributor to professional journals, a participant on panels, and an active lecturer.
In addition to a full schedule of eclectic programs, Dr. Fishell is nearing the completion of a 21-concert project, “The Seasons of Sebastian,” in which she is performing the complete organ works of J.S. Bach for the first time at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Her most recent and upcoming engagements outside of Bloomington take her to venues across the United States and multiple concert tours of Asia and Europe, including recitals at the Beijing National Center of the Performing Arts, Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, Tokyo’s Lilia Hall, Sydney Town Hall, and Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. In the United States she performs under the management of Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc.