EXULTATE
ORGAN MUSIC OF
DANIEL E. GAWTHROP

"This is the world premiere CD dedicated to [Gawthrop's] music and it is largely successful. The very familiar Welsh tune Hyfrydol is given the King’s treatment in the animated and beautifully constructed five-movement Partita. Another highlight is certainly the Jerusalem Symphony, its four movements titled by quotes from the book of Isaiah that serve as the inspiration for the tone of the individual pieces...other works are fairly short one movement entities that have a unique and enclosed tonal message. I enjoyed them all very much...a 1928 Skinner instrument that has been virtually redone over the years, is a broad and robust instrument fully worthy of the type of registrations that Gawthrop desires... Mary Mozelle does everything humanly possible to take advantage of the space [in Princeton University Chapel]...Gawthrop’s music is worth investigating, and this is now the primary place to do so."
Steven Ritter, All Music Guide ~ September 2007

An all-Gawthrop disc may come as a surprise to the organ world, but listeners should be prepared to fall in love with these wonderful works. Already widely recognized as a choral music composer of the highest order, Daniel E. Gawthrop is an accomplished composer of organ music as well. An organist himself, and a great advocate for the instrument, Gawthrop knows how to make the most out of the wide range of sounds the King of Instruments has to offer. His compositional style is unique and often challenging, offering colorful, memorable melodies with great rhythmic variety. There is a also a joyful harmonic and melodic richness in his works. His widely varied thematic material is carefully interwoven to create a memorable listening experience. The composer and I worked closely throughout the course of this project, and I am grateful for the support and interpretive guidance he has provided.

This is the first commercial recording devoted entirely to the organ music of this significant American composer.

Mary Mozelle November 2006

A versatile keyboard artist, Mary Mozelle performs regularly in solo recitals and with orchestra. She has performed on the magnificent pipe organs in the British cathedrals of Exeter and Chester as well as throughout the United States, including New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Ms. Mozelle has appeared with conductors Leonard Slatkin, Robert Shaw, and Mstislav Rostropovich, among many others, and was featured as an organ soloist in the 2000 Mozart Festival at The Kennedy Center under the baton of Artistic Director Christopher Hogwood. Mary Mozelle is currently Associate Organist at The National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. where she is regularly featured as a soloist in the Barham Organ Concert Series. She studied at The University of Chicago, The Chicago Musical College, and West Virginia University where she completed a Master of Music degree majoring in both Organ and Harpsichord performance. Her teachers have included Clyde English, Robert Reuter and Edward Mondello. In an effort to introduce the pipe organ to a broader audience, Ms. Mozelle travels to many churches throughout the United States to perform her special program "The Sights and Sounds of the Pipe Organ". This unique program is bringing her to the attention of an ever-widening circle of admirers impressed by both the narrated performance and her musical artistry. Her presentation of "Sights and Sounds" for the Smithsonian Institution’s Resident Associate Program in May 2003 received rave reviews from professional musicians and lay audience members alike and led to an immediate invitation to present the program for the Northern Virginia Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

Composer Daniel E. Gawthrop was born in 1949 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He has been the recipient of over one hundred commissions to write original music. His works have been published by Dunstan House, Warner Brothers (now Alfred Publishing Co.), Theodore Presser, Sacred Music Press and others. Gawthrop served for three years as Composer-in-Residence to the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra (of Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.) and has been the recipient of four grants from The Barlow Endowment for Musical Composition. He has been commissioned by dozens of institutions including the American Choral Directors Association through their prestigious Raymond Brock Memorial series, and has had works première in the Concert Hall of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle, and Washington National Cathedral. His choral pieces have been performed and recorded by such eminent ensembles as The United States Air Force Singing Sergeants, the Gregg Smith Singers, the Turtle Creek Chorale, the Paul Hill Chorale, the American Boychoir, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Cathedral Choral Society (of Washington National Cathedral) and literally hundreds of other groups in the U.S. and abroad. 
In addition to his work as a composer, Gawthrop has been active as a broadcaster, clinician and adjudicator, organist, conductor, teacher and writer, including a period as music critic for The Washington Post. Gawthrop is a Life Member of the American Choral Directors Association, a member of Chorus America, a member of The American Guild of Organists, and a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the music fraternity. Gawthrop currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University.