Craig Cramer Faculty Organ Series

Craig Cramer is Professor of Organ at the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana. He holds degrees from Westminster Choir College and the Eastman School of Music, where he earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Organ Performance. The Eastman School also awarded him the prestigious Performer's Certificate in Organ. He has studied with Russell Saunders, William Hays, James Drake, David Boe, and André Marchal (Paris). Mr. Cramer has been named the winner of several competitions, including the Alexander McCurdy Competition in Organ Performance at Westminster Choir College and the National Organ Competition in Fort Wayne, Indiana. 

Mr. Cramer has performed throughout the United States and in Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Poland, Scotland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. He has appeared as a soloist with the Toledo Symphony, the South Bend Chamber Orchestra, the South Bend Symphony, the Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra, and the Eastman Philharmonia. He recently performed the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach in eighteen concerts using a distinguished set of mechanical-action organs in the state of Indiana. In May and June of 1999, his seventh annual European tour took him to Germany and Belgium. 

Dieterich Buxtehude (Dietrich, Diderich) (ca. 1637–May 9, 1707) was a German-Danish organist and a highly regarded composer of the Baroque period. His organ works comprise a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and church services. He wrote in a wide variety of vocal and instrumental idioms, and his style strongly influenced many composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach. Organist at the Marienkirche in Lübeck for most of his life, Buxtehude is considered today to be the leading German composer in the time between Heinrich Schütz and Bach.