Santa Barbara Music Club

Member Type: Organist

Thomas Mellan , Organist

Described in the press as “manically unpredictable” and “the bad-boy of organ music,” Thomas Mellan is an organist, pianist, producer and composer based in Los Angeles. In 2012, he played his first recital at Église Saint-Eustache in Paris. He is featured in the official Walt Disney Concert Hall organ DVD. In 2018, his European tour included a
residency at the Lviv Concert Hall, where he gave the Ukrainian premier of Messiaen’s Livre d’Orgue on the largest organ in Ukraine. In 2023, he performed in the international festival on the historic Schnitger organ at the Jacobikirche in Hamburg. As performer, he specializes in virtuosic repertoire from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as French baroque music. His compositions have been performed in North America, Europe and Asia by musicians including the Sakura Cello Quintet, Orest Smovzh, Stephen Tharp and Jared Jacobsen.

His output features « impossible » organ music that attempts to push the limits of organ technique, but also includes a forty-minute set of inventions for solo violin, a concerto for five cellos, piano sonatas, pieces for chamber ensembles and electronic music which straddles the lines between avant-garde classical music, experimental dubstep and death metal.

In 2025, he performed Pierre Boulez’s Second Piano Sonata for the Los Angeles based series Piano Spheres to commemorate Boulez’s 150th birthday. He contributed harpsichord and synthesizer parts on Delirium Musicum’s debut album Seasons, released in 2023 by Warner Classics and produced by Fred Vogler.

Mellan graduated from the USC Thornton School of Music in 2017 with a BM in organ performance and composition. And in 2020, he completed an MM in organ and an MM in composition. He attended Thornton for seven years on full-tuition scholarship. He is currently the organist at First United Methodist Church in Santa Barbara.

SBMC Concert Performances

Lynnette McGee , Organist

Dr. Lynnette Ball McGee has forged an active career as an organ recitalist, teacher, collaborative musician, and conductor. She is presently on the organ faculty at California State University, Fullerton, and is Music Director at First Presbyterian Church, Fullerton, where she conducts the Kirk Choir, Kirk Handbell Choir, and is principal organist.

As an organ recitalist, Lynnette has performed numerous concerts, including performances at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, United Church of Christ, Claremont, and First United Methodist Church, Pasadena. Internationally, performance venues include the famed churches in Paris of St. Sulpice, St. Eustache, La Trinité, and St. Séverin, as well as the Basilica of Santa Maria del Coro in San Sebastian, Spain. Her collaborative work includes performances with the Aliso Viejo Symphony, California Concert Artists, Redondo Beach Baroque Festival, Corona del Mar Baroque Festival, Southern California Brass Ensemble, and university choirs and orchestras of Chapman University, Concordia University, Biola University, and Saddleback College. Her work with organist Dr. Brenda King Durden may be heard on the disc, Double Fantasy: Organ Duets.

Lynnette earned her Doctorate of Musical Arts from Claremont Graduate University where she was awarded a Music Fellowship and the CE and Bertha Harsh Fellowship. She also holds degrees in organ performance from California State University, Fullerton, where she graduated with highest honors and was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Kappa Lambda honor societies. Her organ teachers include Dr. Carey Robertson, Esther Jones, Dr. Frances Nobert, and Dr. Leslie Spelman.

SBMC Concert Performances

Tom Mueller , Organist

Tom Mueller serves as Professor of Music and University Organist at Concordia University in Irvine, California, where he directs academic programs in keyboard, composition, and church music. He is an active recitalist, composer, and educator.

Mueller won first place in the 2014 Schoenstein Competition in Hymn-Playing, held in conjunction with the national convention of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) in Boston, Massachusetts, and was honored by The Diapason as a member of the inaugural “20 Under 30” list of influential figures in the world of organ and church music in 2015.
He maintains an active concert schedule, and frequently performs across the United States and Europe. In 2010, he performed the complete organ works of J. S. Bach in a series of seventeen concerts in his native state of Maine. He has received numerous commissions for new choral and liturgical works, and performances of his compositions have been broadcast on national radio and television. As an organist, his recording credits include Scott Perkin’s A New England Requiem and O Beauty Ever Ancient Ever New by the Choir of St. James’, both of which were released on the Gothic label. His organ music is published by ECS.

Research interests include the early organ and keyboard works of J. S. Bach, the performance practice of organ continuo playing in the classical-era concerted sacred music of Germany and Austria, and the American reception of the nineteenth-century opera star Jenny Lind. He has presented workshops, masterclasses, and lectures for numerous organizations, including numerous AGO chapters, and has served as a faculty member for the AGO’s Pipe Organ Encounter (POE) program for young organists. He has held professional leadership and committee positions at regional and national levels of the AGO and the Association of Lutheran Musicians.

Mueller earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Eastman School of Music. He also holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame (M.S.M. in organ), and the University of Maine at Augusta (B.M. in jazz composition and piano), where he graduated summa cum laude. He resides in Orange County with his wife and daughters.

Roger Nyquist , Organist

Dr. Roger Nyquist, concert organist and composer, is an internationally known organ virtuoso and recording artist who has concertized throughout the U.S. and Europe and is in demand as recitalist and master teacher. Born in Rockford, IL, he earned his BM Degree, cum laude, from Augustana College, his MM Degree from Syracuse University, and his DMA Degree from Indiana University. Much like his renowned teachers, Arthur Poister, Catharine Crozier, and André Marchal, he has devoted a major portion of his career to teaching: he served on the faculty of Southwestern College (Winfield, KS) and the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was Professor of Music and University Organist at Santa Clara University.

Among numerous honors, he is listed in International Who’s Who in Music, Outstanding Educators of America, and American Keyboard Artists and received the “Outstanding Achievement Award” from the Alumni Association of Augustana College for his career as concert organist and teacher. He is the composer of the frequently performed Adagio, for organ, and Alleluia, an anthem for mixed choir, and is author of the book, . In addition to his active concert career, he has recorded extensively for Arkay, Century, Chapel-Bridge, Digital Disc Corporation, and Orion Master Recordings (Yehudi Menuhin Foundation), with 33 albums featuring over 220 compositions.

Now residing in Sacramento, CA, Dr. Nyquist devotes full time to his concert career, private organ teaching, and recording. The following quote from Dr. Nyquist’s writings exemplifies his philosophy regarding the ability to communicate through music making: “It is the spirit of the music that remains with the listener long after the sound has subsided. The spirit of the composer co-mingles with the performer’s spirit to produce one blended spirit. When this act occurs, one hears the very essence of the music.”

SBMC Concert Performances

Charles Talmadge , Organist

Charles Talmadge, organist, is currently Assisting Organist at The Old Mission and Interim Organist at All Saints-By-The-Sea Episcopal Church. He likes to think of himself as a well-rounded musician who plays organ and piano, with experience as bassist and cellist; choral singing from an early age has added to his enjoyment of creating music with others, with these contrasting liturgical traditions providing a rich background in sacred music. He majored in piano performance at California State Universities, San Bernadino and Fullerton, and did graduate study in organ at San Diego State University. Past recitals have been presented at St. Mary’s Cathedral, San Francisco, Trinity United Methodist Church, Eugene, Oregon, Advent Series at Trinity Episcopal and Lenten Series at First United Methodist Church, Santa Barbara, and he has been pianist for Capitol Opera in Sacramento since 1997.

SBMC Concert Performances

Emma Lou Diemer , Composer, Pianist, Organist

Emma Lou Diemer was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on November 24, 1927 and died in Santa Barbara, California on June 2, 2024. Her father, George Willis Diemer, was an educator (college president); her mother, Myrtle Casebolt Diemer, was a church worker and homemaker. Her sister, Dorothy Diemer Hendry, was an educator, poet, writer, musician (married to Col. Wickliffe B. Hendry; their children are Betty Augsburger, Terri Sims, Alan Hendry, Bonny Gierhart). Her brothers were George W. Diemer II, an educator, Marine fighter pilot, musician, and John Irving Diemer educator, musician (his children are George W. Diemer III, René Krey, Jack Diemer, Dee Dee Diemer).

Emma Lou played the piano and composed at a very early age and became organist in her church at age 13. Her great interest in composing music continued through College High School in Warrensburg, MO, and she majored in composition at the Yale Music School (BM, 1949; MM, 1950) and at the Eastman School of Music (Ph.D, 1960). She studied in Brussels, Belgium on a Fulbright Scholarship and spent two summers of composition study at the Berkshire Music Center.

She taught in several colleges and was organist at several churches in the Kansas City area during the 1950s. From 1959-61 she was composer-in-residence in the Arlington, VA schools under the Ford Foundation Young Composers Project, and composed many choral and instrumental works for the schools, a number of which are still in publication. She was consultant for the MENC Contemporary Music Project before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland where she taught composition and theory from 1965-70. In 1971 she moved from the East Coast to teach composition and theory at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At UCSB she was instrumental in founding the electronic/computer music program. In 1991 she became Professor Emeritus at UCSB.

Through the years she fulfilled many commissions (orchestral, chamber ensemble, keyboard, choral, vocal) from schools, churches, and professional organizations. Most of her works are published. She received awards from Yale University (Certificate of Merit), The Eastman School of Music (Edward Benjamin Award), the National Endowment for the Arts (electronic music project), Mu Phi Epsilon (Certificate of Merit), the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards (for piano concerto), the American Guild of Organists (Composer of the Year), the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers/ASCAP (annually since 1962 for performances and publications), the Santa Barbara Symphony (composer-in-residence, 1990-92), the University of Central Missouri (honorary doctorate), and many others.

She was an active keyboard performer (piano, organ, harpsichord, synthesizer), and has given concerts of her own music at Washington National Cathedral, St. Mary’s Cathedral and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, and elsewhere.

In 2012 she wrote two works for violinist Philip Ficsor: Concerto for Violin (A Little Parlour Music, Remembrance of Things Past, Santa Barbara Rag) that he premiered October 19, 2012 with the Westmont College Orchestra under Michael Shasberger in Hahn Hall at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara. And a light piece for violin and organ: Holiday Madness Medley that he and Diemer premiered at the SB Music Club at First Congregational Church, SB on December 1, 2012. These works will eventually be published. Along with a new work titled Going Away they were recorded by Philip Ficsor and Diemer on the album, Going Away.

SBMC Concert Performances

Steve Hodson , Director Emeritus, Pianist, Organist

Steve Hodson is Professor of Music at Westmont College where his duties have included teaching piano and organ, conducting, and music survey, and leading various singing groups. He conducts the Santa Barbara Master Chorale and serves as organist at First United Methodist Church of Santa Barbara. Hodson holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is Vice-President of the Western Division of the American Choral Directors Association (encompassing California, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona), and past President of California ACDA. He enjoys performing on piano, organ, and harpsichord and is an accomplished accompanist.

SBMC Concert Performances

Thomas Joyce , Organist

Organist Thomas Joyce is Director of Music at Trinity Episcopal Church. Originally from Cambridge, England, Thomas has spent most of his life living in the United States. This past July, he finally became a U.S. citizen.

Mr. Joyce began his musical career as a boy chorister at the Washington National Cathedral, and continued his studies at Interlochen Arts Academy. He later attained degrees in music from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Yale University, and University of Washington. Before finding his home in Santa Barbara, Thomas worked for several churches and cathedrals throughout the United States as an organist and choral conductor.

In addition to his work as a church musician, he serves on the music faculty at Santa Barbara City College, instructs organ students from Westmont College, and is the keyboard accompanist for Adelfos Ensemble.

SBMC Concert Performances

Adán Fernández , Organist

Dr. Adán Fernández is the Director of Music and Liturgy/Organist at holy Family Catholic Church. He is also the University Organist and Adjunct Professor at California Lutheran University where he teaches Keyboard harmony and Worship and Music Courses. Dr. Fernández is the founding director of the Glendale Youth Symphony, a non-profit in Glendale California, and Associate Conductor of the National Children’s Chorus. Dr. Fernández has performed around California on some of its most prominent organs and performs a thirty minute program every month at Cal Lutheran for their Monthly Bach Recital Series. Dr. Fernández has degrees in piano, organ, and a doctorate in Sacred Music from USC with an emphasis in Organ Performance and Choral Music.

SBMC Concert Performances

Raymond Egan , Organist

Raymond Egan’s music has been performed throughout the United States, in Europe, in Australia, and at conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and The American Guild of Organists. He has had commissions from the General Assembly of The Unitarian Universalist Church and from California State University Los Angeles. His sacred music includes two masses, some larger choral works on environmental themes, and lots of choral, solo voice, and organ music. In the secular realm he is the composer of the score for the United States Steel documentary, Worlds of Von Braun.

He is the grandson of Raymond Egan, a member of the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame for his songs such as “Ain’t We Got Fun” and “Sleepy Time Gal”. Raymond III was honored at the Ventura A. G. O. Chapter’s recent A Celebration of Ventura County Composers. He is presently the Organist of First United Methodist Church, Santa Barbara. He has also held positions as the Director of Music/Organist & Choirmaster of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, Los Angeles, and Minister of Music of Agape Christian Fellowship Church, Compton, California.

Raymond Egan was a composition student of Samuel Adler and John Corigliano, and an organ student of David Craighead. He has a Doctoral degree in conducting from the Thornton School of Music, The University of Southern California, where he was the Outstanding Doctoral student of 1996.

SBMC Concert Performances