This preview has been provided by the St. Stephen’s Concert Series.

On Saturday, November 11, at 4:00PM, the 20 year-old organist, Raymond Hawkins, will present the annual Frank Hawkins Kenan Memorial Organ Recital at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Durham.

Mr. Hawkins is a third year student in the college program of the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he studies organ with Dr. Timothy Olsen. When Hawkins first came to the school as a high school student, Olsen was so impressed with his “talent, dedication, and passion for the organ” that he made Hawkins his assistant at Augsburg Lutheran Church in Winston-Salem. Hawkins became the church’s first Music Intern.

Generously endowed with organist genes (courtesy of his father, a grand-father, and a great-grand-father), Hawkins’ prize-winning ways began early. At the SCISA Music Festival in Columbia, SC he won gold medals in organ five years in a row, starting when he was in the sixth grade. At the 2014 High School Organ Competition he won both the $2,000 Thomas S. Kenan, III First Prize and the $350 John and Margaret Mueller Hymn Prize. During the same year, as a winner in the Senior Division of the Peter Paul Perret Youth Talent Search, he performed Guilmant’s Symphony No. 2 with the Winston-Salem Symphony.

Hawkins’ eclectic program at St. Stephen’s will feature Mendelssohn’s fourth organ sonata, Alain’s brilliant Litanies, Buxtehude’s E major Praeludium, and Daquin’s Noel Suisse. Works by Bach, Brahms, and Vierne complete the program. (On October 29 Hawkins will perform much the same program at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco.)

A TV camera in the organ loft and a screen at the front of the church will allow the audience to watch Hawkins and his stop assistants in action.

The recital is part of the current season on the St. Stephen’s Concert Series. Tickets ($25 cash or check only) will be available at the door with free admission for those 18 or under. A reception will follow the concert. There will be no Pre-Concert Discussion. The church is located at 82 Kimberly Dr., Durham, NC, 27707.