The Hope College Donia Organ Concert series will feature Nicole Simental, who is assistant director of music and principal organist at Saint Joseph Cathedral in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
Simental will open with “Etude No. 4 ‘Tierces,’” by David Briggs, and “Variations on Est-ce Mars,” by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. She will then play “Prelude and Fugue,” in E Minor, by Johann Sebastian Bach, and “Lullaby” from “Suite No. 2,” by Calvin Hampton. Simental will continue with “Sonata IV, Op. 65,” in B-flat Major, by Felix Mendelssohn, and “Mediation: Love Unknown,” by Francis Jackson. Closing the concert, she will perform “Andante Sostenuto,” from “Symphonie Gothique, Op. 70,” by Charles-Marie Widor, and “Symphony No. 2, Op. 20,” by Louis Vierne.
For the past several years, Simental has held many posts as a church musician and university accompanist across the country. She was the accompanist for the Women’s Chorale and Opera Music Theater Program at Wheaton College. During her tenure at the University of Notre Dame, she was the graduate assistant to the Notre Dame Liturgical and Women’s Choirs.
In 2016, She won the Immanuel Lutheran Organ Scholar Award; was the co-winner at the First Sursa American Organ Competition at Ball State University; and was awarded first prize at the IV International Goedicke Organ Competition at the Moscow Conservatory in Moscow, Russia. Most recently, in 2018 she was a Boston Bach Prizewinner at the Boston Bach International Organ Competition.
Simental received her master’s degree in sacred music from the University of Notre Dame and Bachelor of Music degree from Wheaton College, and completed additional studies at Oberlin College. She is a candidate for the Doctorate of Music in organ performance at Indiana University.
The concert has been made possible through the generous support of the college’s Tom Donia Memorial Organ Fund. The fund was created in 1990 by family and friends of Tom Donia, a 1971 Hope graduate who died in 1990. The director of communications for the American Red Cross, Donia had a life-long interest in music.
The Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts is located at 221 Columbia Ave., between Ninth and 10th streets.