Organist Aaron Sunstein currently serves as Minister of Music at First Lutheran Church in Carlisle, PA where he directs four choirs and plays a fine Aeolian-Skinner organ (Opus 1155/1951). He is a candidate for the the Doctor of Music in organ degree in organ at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
While in residence at Indiana he studied organ with Chris Young, served as Associate Instructor for the Organ Department, and was the Organist of St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Bloomington. As Associate Instructor, Aaron taught organ lessons, organ literature, and sacred music coursework. Previously, he lived in the Darlecarlia region of Sweden where he served as Cantor at two historic country churches and completed a masters degree from Musikhögskolan i Piteå as a student of Gary Verkade. His undergraduate training was at the University of Iowa, where his teacher was Delbert Disselhorst. A native of Boston, Aaron’s earliest musical formation was received as a member of the Choir of Men and Boys at the Parish of All Saints Ashmont and as an organ student of Michael Kleinschmidt.
Aaron was a semifinalist in the 2014 Young Artists Competition sponsored by the American Guild of Organists, received second prize in the 2014 Ft. Wayne National Organ Competition, second prize in the 2012 Rodland Competition, and first prize in the 2008 Twin Cities American Guild of Organists/Schubert Club Competition.
Aaron’s wide-ranging solo repertoire includes landmark pre-Bach compositions by Frescobaldi, Buxtehude, Reincken, and Correa de Arauxo, Romantic and post-Romantic works regarded as among the most difficult written for the organ including Schoenberg’s Variations on a Recitative Opus 40, Reger’s Introduction, Variations, and Fugue Opus 73, and Jehan Alain’s Trois Danses as well as works by a number of leading contemporary composers including Gunther Schuller, Klaus Huber, Jörg Herchet, and Claude Lefebvre.