by Diana Castro-Vazquez

On February 21, 2024, Renée Anne Louprette, Assistant Professor of Music and College Organist at Bard College, visited Greensboro College and gave a lecture at Finch Chapel. Kenley Ahedo, the outreach coordinator for “Music for a Great Space,” welcomed and introduced Ms. Louprette to us.

Louprette currently teaches at Bard College in New York and is the Director of the Bard Baroque Ensemble. Louprette used to be a full-time church musician, and she was looking for an opportunity to advance in her career after having many part-time jobs teaching at universities and conservatories. She applied to many programs to have a major role, but in many positions, she was not being considered. She decided to get a master’s degree in conducting at Bard – which has a distinguished conducting program – in order to refine her skills and advance her eligibility for music directorship positions.  Before graduating, she was offered the opportunity to apply to teach at Bard and direct the Baroque Ensemble there – so both dreams came true.

She grew up Catholic and her family was very involved in her life. She started to play the piano at age four and developed perfect pitch early in life. There was an organ at her church, but at the time, she did not know how to play it. She continued her piano studies at the University of Hartford, and by her junior year, one of her friends wanted to take a class where they were going to learn the organ and asked her to do it as well. She was then offered a church job that also involved an organ. During the first couple of months, she stated that it felt like torture because the hands and feet go opposite ways. However, after a couple of months, it all clicked.

One of Louprette’s dreams had been to play at the Church of Notre Dame de Paris, which she was able to do on December 29, 2018. She was one of the last people to perform a recital there before the fire. Louprette knows French and got to study in France, which resulted in the opportunity to play there. She rehearsed in the middle of the night, and she played music by Marcel Dupré, a French organist and composer. Notre Dame has a famous organ, the largest in France, and according to the Friends of Notre Dame de Paris website, the organ “[consists] of approximately 8,000 pipes, a console with five keyboards and pedals and 109 stops. Its largest pipes stand an impressive 32 feet tall.”

In addition to knowledge and interest in France, Louprette developed a fascination with Romania. It started when she had a medical condition, and her doctor was Romanian. She decided to learn Romanian to thank her doctor, and when the doctor heard her speak Romanian, he was deeply moved. Trying to give him this gift, she became infatuated with the language. She found a teacher online and has been studying weekly since 2020.

Soon after, Louprette became interested in organs in Romania, but she could not find much about them. She then learned about the Black Church organ in Brasov, Romania. According to Sonus Paradis, the Virtual Pipe Organ Project, this instrument is the largest preserved organ by Carl August Buchholz, the prolific Berlin organ builder. It consists of a four-manual console with 63 sounding stops. The organ was built in 1839 in the early Romantic style.

In seeking a grant to spend time in Romania researching Romanian organs, Louprette met Steffen Schlandt, her first point of contact to play at the Black Church. She asked Schlandt if he could be her sponsor, to which he said yes, and she was granted a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for her to document the preservation and restoration of historic pipe organs in Transylvania. She stayed at Schlandt’s parents’ house, where she documented the organs in Transylvania (Romanian). It was very cold, and by the winter months, she became sick from the frigid temperatures in the ancient churches. She learned a lot about the culture, including how they do not promote the use of antibiotics. She instead used cultural remedies to cure her sickness while living there. She received a lot of education with the German Saxons, which is something she did not expect, and she attended Lutheran churches and even sang chorales in German as a member of the congregation.

During her stay she met a Swiss couple that traveled to Transylvania and who owned a workshop that restores instruments. They were restoring organs, and they train young Romanians in the skills of carpentry and organ building. Through this workshop, she has also been introduced to new Romanian organs, as well as historic instruments from the early 17th through 19th centuries. These organs are extremely heavy and large, so she had to play them very differently. 

Louprette is currently very busy, as she is preparing an article to hopefully one day publish, as well as editing videos she will be sharing. You can watch her YouTube videos, where she plays many different organs during her career. She also still travels back to Romania, which she has a very strong connection with.

After listening to her play and hearing about her journey, I can say how inspired I am, and I hope you are too. Louprette has made a career in something that she loves and has gotten to learn and have fun with it. This is a real-life example of never giving up and following your dreams.