Each year, a competition takes place in Syracuse, New York, to honor students of organ playing with scholarship awards. From around the country, contestants aged 30 and under submit recordings of chosen compositions in required categories. Up to six are chosen as finalists, with a final in-person competition taking place at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Syracuse.
The 2014 winner was Massachusetts organist Amanda Mole, who can be see in performance below.
The connection to Galion? This event is named the Arthur Poister Organ Competition. Poister was a world renowned organist and teacher. He was also a Galion boy and a graduate of Galion High School. Born in 1898, Poister died in 1980 and is buried in Fairview Cemetery. He grew up in a house which still stands on Harding Way West, now the home of Claire Filiberti.
Poister’s career included private study with the leading organist of the day, Marcel Dupre, organist at St. Sulpice in Paris.
While growing up in Galion, Poister played for services at both First United Church of Christ, his home church, and at Grace Episcopal. He was a student of Bessie Todd, who also taught Galion and Crestline residents Herb Krichbaum, Joyce Hayden Cating, and Boyd Epperson. This line of instruction continues today with Galion organists and pianists Thomas Palmer and Amy Baxter Jarvis, both students of Krichbaum.
Some years ago, organist David Pickering, now a professor at Kansas State University, came to Galion to perform research on Poister for an upcoming biography.
For a through look at Arthur Poister’s career, click here to read his obituary as featured on the website of the Syracuse Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
