A Bit About LINDA
Blessed with a dad who joyously filled our home with his “by-ear” piano tunes and a mom who was always exposing us to the great composers through her large record collection, I was well on my way to LOVING music before I entered nursery school.
At age 8 piano lessons began— what a delight! — but it was attending church services as a teenager at First Church of Christ, Congregational in West Hartford which exposed me to an exceptionally superb music program and a mentor, Dr. Gordon W. Stearns, Sr., whose ministry of music inspired my whole career. Singing in his amazing choirs (over 300 people — 150 in the high school choir alone...) touched my young soul in very deep places. I marveled at the beautiful and sensitive way that he enabled choristers to bring out the best within themselves while singing their faith through the musical texts.
At age 16, piano lessons changed to organ lessons and after graduation led to a music major at Middlebury College with a deepening conviction that music ministry was the path to making sense of my life. The deeper I immersed myself in music, the more it became a basic need for my spirit — a way to express what words cannot — and a vehicle for our hearts to understand what our minds cannot ...
Frederick Buechner said that —
The place to which God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet ...
Music in a faith setting connects us to the Divine as we sing or play or listen — and ministers to others as God speaks through the music we share.
What a privilege and JOY it is to help make that happen!