John Walker (organist)

John Walker
at the E.M. Skinner pipe organ of Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in 2008
Born	Johnstown, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Organist, Choirmaster, and Professor

John C. Walker, more familiarly known as John Walker, is an American concert organist, choirmaster, and CD recording artist. He is also president of the American Guild of Organists, elected in May 2014 to a two-year term of the 16,000-member organization. Walker has performed throughout the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe. He is "widely recognized for his flawless technique and execution as well as his controlled and passionate playing," said Duke University in announcing a John Walker recital at Duke Chapel. Since 2006 he has served on the faculty of the Peabody Institute and George Mason University.

Walker, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was born November 19, 1941 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. As a child growing up in Spring Run, Franklin County, Pennsylvania and later Fredonia, Pennsylvania, he said that he "always wished that I could be the church organist." He began fulfilling his wish while a high school freshman in Spring Run, playing as a substitute church organist at his father's church when the regular organist became ill for a month. He studied at Westminster College, Pennsylvania and at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago where he earned two Master of Music degrees : organ and church music in 1965 and music theory in 1969. Walker then earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stanford University in 1972. His teachers, Raymond Ocock and Robert Lodine, "molded and nurtured" his career, wrote Walker. Herbert Nanney, Professor of Music at Stanford, also had a dominant role in Walker's professional growth.