Morristown organist to receive international honor

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By Sharon Sheridan

On Monday, Morristown organist Darryl Roland will become one of the first two Americans to receive a top music award from the Guild of Church Musicians in London. 

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will present Roland, music director at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on South Street, with an honorary fellowship diploma during an Evensong at the Queen’s Chapel, Marlborough Road, at St. James Palace. His partner, St. Peter’s Associate Organist Matthew Boatmon, and the church’s rector, the Rev. Janet Broderick, will accompany him to the ceremony. Organist Jeffrey Smith, who has served at Episcopal cathedrals in Indianapolis, San Francisco and Lexington, Ky., as well as at St. Paul’s Episcopal Parish in Washington, D.C., also will receive a diploma. 

Darryl Roland directs the intergenerational choir at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Morristown during an Epiphany service. Diana Wilcox photo

The guild is a professional organization based in Great Britain that is similar to the American Guild of Organists, Roland explained.

Board member Giles Brightwell told him he was being honored for the work he had done building and running a choir school at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of Saint John in Wilmington, Del., where he served before coming to St. Peter’s in August.  

“They were really sensitive to the fact that the cathedral is closing [later this year], and they felt that the work really needed to be recognized,” he said. “It’s teaching boys and girls to sing in the English cathedral tradition, to sing on a professional level with adults. It’s taking what was sort of the classic English cathedral tradition of men and boys [choirs] and making it work in America, and also extending these opportunities to a diverse student body, especially underserved communities.” 

Using this model up to 40 young singers from urban at-risk youth to those from privileged backgrounds sang in an intergenerational choir and had the opportunity to participate in choir tours and summer camp. They received individual and group choral instruction, private piano lessons, leadership classes, homework help and tutoring. They also had access to nutrition and Zumba classes, SAT preparation and mentoring.

“It was really a holistic sort of approach,” Roland said.

The program partnered with the YMCA resource center and received grants from various sources. 

Roland hopes to adapt the choir school model for the music program at St. Peter’s. Both the Delaware cathedral and Morristown church have had long traditions of training adult and child singers, and St. Peter’s has the added advantages of its beautiful architecture and “fabulous,” historic Skinner organ, he said.  

On Sunday evening, Roland, Boatmon and Broderick will fly to England. Monday, they will lunch with Brightwell at the Reform Club, then head to the chapel located down the street from Buckingham Palace for the Evensong. 

Darryl Roland prepares to lead carol singing during a Victorian Christmas celebration at the St. Peter's rectory. Sharon Sheridan photo

Roland will wear an academic gown for the service. “They’re keeping one for you,” Broderick said while discussing the trip with him and Morristown Green on Jan. 10.  

But she had a fashion protocol concern of her own: “My whole question is whether I should wear a hat.” 

Following the ceremony, the trio will travel to Ireland to visit a home the Broderick family owns there before returning to Morristown at week’s end. 

Broderick called the award “a great honor for St. Peter’s and for the American church.” 

“I think as an outlier in the British, English choir tradition, we’ve been able to contribute a pedagogy that potentially can reinvigorate choirs in the United Kingdom,” she said.  

The choir school model with its intergenerational choir can benefit and attract worshipers as well as participants, she said. “I know that the demographics here are that people are particularly responsive to great liturgical music. We’ve seen already the result of that in the attendance, for example, Christmas Eve.”  

When he received a letter about the award, Roland said, “It took awhile for it to sink in. When I read it a couple of times and began to understand what it was, I was very excited.” 

“With any job, you just work day by day,” he said. Working with young choristers, progress can be incremental. “To actually be recognized … for your collective work, it’s very exciting to just sort of step back and savor it.” 

1 COMMENT

  1. The City, County & State should designate some future date in January / February as Darryl Roland Day and he should be presented at the Governor’s Resident & State Capitol Hill before each Body (House & Senate) while the Governor reads the Proclomation. Everyone should be so very proud of his fine work and legacy.

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