Category Archives: CarillonDocs

2025-04-18
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Andrea McCrady

Tags : 1950-1999 Canada

Canada’s dominion carilloneur says her students practise in the Peace Tower and their mistakes are broadcast to Parliament Hill. Andrea McCrady has been playing the bell instrument since 1971. (Oct. 13, 2018)

Dr. Andrea McCrady was appointed Dominion Carillonneur of the Peace Tower Carillon in 2008. She began playing the carillon in 1971 at Trinity College, Hartford, CT (B.A., 1975). While in Europe on a post-graduate fellowship, she studied at the carillon schools in the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. During medical school at McGill University, Montreal, she was carillonneur at St. Joseph’s Oratory, followed by her hospital residency in Toronto, where she played at the University of Toronto and the Canadian National Exhibition. From 1990-2008, she coordinated the carillon program at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Spokane, WA, where she also practiced family medicine. In 2008, she retired from medicine upon receiving a Bachelor of Music magna cum laude from the University of Denver. She joined the faculty of Carleton University in Ottawa in 2012 as instructor in the first carillon studies programme in Canada.

Dr. McCrady served for many years on the board of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA), and as its President from 1988-89. She has co-chaired the GCNA Ronald Barnes Memorial Grant Fund and the Heritage Music Committee. She served as secretary of the World Carillon Federation (WCF), 1990 – 1996, and has given presentations or recitals for the 1996, 2002, 2014, 2021 and 2023 WCF congresses.

Andrea McCrady

https://www.ourcommons.ca/heritage/en/carillon/the-dominion-carillonneur

https://www.facebook.com/andrea.mccrady.3

Gunther Strothmann

Tags : 1900-1949 Germany Kiel

Category : CarillonDocs , conductorDocs , OrganDocs

Dr. Gunther Strothmann worked as a doctor in Kiel until the end of 2006. After graduating from high school in Bremen, he took piano, organ, improvisation, and composition lessons from Ernst Hörbe (1921–2012), among others. After studying medicine in Kiel, he began his musical activities as a performing organist. In 1977, he founded the Melsdorf Symphony Orchestra, an amateur ensemble that has since grown to more than 80 players as a project orchestra. In 1999, Strothmann founded the Klassikensemble Kiel, a chamber orchestra, with Michael Stoll, which he directed until 2017. Gunther Strothmann also founded the Melsdorf Symphony Orchestra in 1977. Between 1980 and 2022, he directed the Rachmaninoff Choir Kiel. The Klassik-Ensemble Kiel is also his initiative.

In 1999, the Kiel Carillon, located in the tower of the former Kiel Franciscan monastery, was inaugurated with a public concert. Strothmann was appointed carillonneur and custodian of the Kiel Glockenspiel by the North Elbian Church that same year. Gunther Strothmann has toured Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and the USA.