Afternoon Recital
JJ Mitchell, Director of Music for St. John Neumann, Reston, VA continues our Cathedral Great Organ 2024 Concert Series with a 40-minute recital on our Lively-Fulcher organ following the 12:10pm Mass on Wednesday, March 6, 2024. Dr. Mitchell will play works of Florence Price, Correa de Arauxo, Rachel Laurin, Ethel Smyth, William Grant Still, and C.M. Widor .
The concert is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed on our YouTube Channel. Come, bring a friend, and enjoy this performance in person, or join via the livestream.
Contact: Tom Stehle, Pastoral Associate for Liturgy and Director of Music Ministries
Meet the Artist
Named to The Diapason magazine’s Class of 20 Under 30 in 2021, Dr. John Joseph “JJ” Mitchell is an organist with passion for organ and sacred music. He was recently appointed Director of Music at St. John Neumann Church in Reston, VA where he leads a large music program from both the conducting podium and the organ bench. Musical elements in the church’s liturgies are diverse, with repertoire ranging from traditional hymnody and Renaissance polyphony to Gospel anthems and Taizé prayer.
An in-demand musician in the DC metropolitan area, JJ earned a Doctorate in Musical Arts in Organ Performance with a minor in Arts Leadership from the University of Houston on a full-ride Graduate Tuition Fellowship in May 2023 at the age of twenty-eight. Previously, JJ graduated Summa Cum Laude from Westminster Choir College with a bachelor’s degree in Sacred Music. He then earned his Master of Sacred Music degree in Organ Performance from the University of Notre Dame, where he attended on another full-tuition scholarship. He also studied at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Toulouse (France).
JJ has served as organist on the music staff of churches such as Christ Church Cathedral (Houston, TX), the Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Notre Dame, IN), and the Cathedral of St. Thomas More (Arlington, VA). He has performed concerts in these churches as well as at Longwood Gardens, Boston Symphony Hall, the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, and various other churches across the United States, Canada, France, and England. JJ was awarded Second Prize in the Hall Pipe Organ Competition in March 2022. He is the winner of the Nanovic Grant for European Study for Professional Development and was a finalist for the Frank Huntington Beebe Grant. In September 2020, he was a guest on the "Sounds from the Spires" SiriusXM Radio program in which his organ recordings were broadcast. He has also played live for internationally televised liturgies and concerts streamed on the networks EWTN and Salt + Life Media. JJ has collaborated with the Grammy nominated ensemble Ars Lyrica Houston on continuo organ and harpsichord.
In addition to his musical craft, JJ is also an accomplished scholar. Inspired by his study in France, his dissertation profiled the Puget family, a dynasty of organ builders from Toulouse. This work, the first ever dissertation on the Puget family written in English, was also the first major research on this topic to come from an academic institution in thirty-seven years. In addition, JJ was twenty-four years old when a separate research of his on the musical influences of César Franck was published in the Vox Humana Organ Journal.
JJ is a member of the American Guild of Organists, L’Association Jean-Claude Guidarini, and the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM), from which he has received several scholarships. He has served on NPM’s National Publications Committee. JJ’s career goal is to teach sacred music to the next generation.
