Organist Ted W. Barr's calling has led him to Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist churches.
"When you're working for $16,000 and you can go down the road and make $20,000, you go," he said.
Two years ago, he finally landed his dream job as full-time director of music and a concert series at Trinity Presbyterian in Cherry Hill.
"This church has valued music for a very long time," said Barr, 47, of Hammonton, N.J. "They make it possible for me to make a living."
Sacred music is a challenging job market, say organists and churches alike. Demand remains high, but often in part-time, budget-constrained jobs. Retirement has depleted the bench, and a new generation of players is growing slowly amid a falloff in church attendance and college organ programs.
To build enthusiasm for its instrument, the 20,000-member American Guild of Organists is sponsoring more than 250 concerts today in the United States and abroad, including in Philadelphia, Abington, Bryn Mawr, Lansdale, Cherry Hill and Riverton.
"We started looking for an organist, and it's tough," said Barbara Zimmermann, organizer of the community concert series at Broad Street Methodist Church in Burlington City. "They really only play Sunday and Thursday evenings. It isn't a full-time job."
The church's organist, Marion Bradley, who is in her 80s, has served there 50 years, Zimmermann said. Bradley's daughter, a pianist taught by her mother, has been filling in, but she has a full-time municipal job.
"Salaries are the problem," Zimmermann said. "Churches are not wealthy. We would like to pay them more, but the budget is sitting on the table saying, 'Ouch.' "
The American Guild of Organists' 2008 salary guidelines range from $10,409 a year for a quarter-time employee with an associate degree to $77,018 for a full-time player with a doctorate.
For many years, a lot of organists were homemakers who could work part time, said F. Anthony Thurman, the guild's director of development and communications. Now many families don't have that flexibility.
"Those church positions that can offer full time have no problem finding qualified people," he said.
Organ graduates from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and Westminster Choir College in Princeton land coveted jobs at the Mormon Tabernacle or large churches in Florida or Texas with televised services, said concert organist Alan Morrison, 39, of Philadelphia.
But even that's not guaranteed.
"People in the big-time jobs tend to hunker down and stay for 20 years or longer," he said.
Many organists combine concert careers with teaching jobs or part-time church positions, said Morrison, who teaches at Curtis and Westminster, plays regularly at Ursinus College, and keeps up a rigorous national performance schedule.
"It's such a hard job," said Morrison, who studied at Curtis and the Juilliard School in New York. "It can be unstable. If a new minister or priest comes in, everyone can be out."
In South Jersey, only a few churches in Cherry Hill, Moorestown and Haddonfield employ full-time organists, Barr said.
"At some level, it's a lack of understanding of the amount of work the job takes, but it's also budgetary," he said.
Every week, one or two churches seek a job applicant from Marcos Krieger, organ professor and director of chapel music at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa. - a demand that far exceeds his program of five organ majors. Several other students, many of whom already play in their churches, also take lessons from him.
"Churches are scrambling for well-qualified organists," Krieger said. "A whole generation of church musicians trained 30 years ago are being replaced" because of retirement.
Susquehanna, a Lutheran school, is one of a shrinking number of universities offering organ instruction. Between 2004 and 2007, the number of organ degree programs dropped 16 percent nationwide, from 233 to 196, according to the National Association of Schools of Music. Organ graduates fell 22 percent in that period.
Church music inspired the creation in 1926 of Westminster Choir College, now affiliated with Rider University. In its heyday in the late 1950s and early 1960s and again in the 1980s, as many as 100 students at a time majored in organ, said Ken Cowan, coordinator of organ and sacred music. Today, 28 students pursue organ.
Churches without organists may opt for piano accompaniments, recorded music, or electronic keyboards with organ settings, Krieger said. Some churches juggle service times so organists can travel between locations.
"It's not unlike when circuit ministers went from church to church, but now it's happening with church musicians," Krieger said.
Morrison said organ recitals in venues such as the Kimmel Center, Macy's in the former Center City Wanamakers, and concert halls in Dallas, Seattle, Los Angeles and Cleveland were raising interest.
Also, most of his 14 students participated in Pipe Organ Encounters, summer camps that the American Guild of Organists started in 1988 around the country to introduce teenagers to the organ or further their classical studies.
The organ music that people love most, however, is hymns, Barr said.
As a child in Kentucky, he would proudly perform his latest Bach concerto for relatives, "and then my aunt would ask, 'Can you play "How Great Thou Art'?"
That's why he programmed his contribution to the guild's "Organ Spectacular" today with an hour and a half of beloved hymns, including "Amazing Grace" and "Great is Thy Faithfulness." The free 7 p.m. concert will feature Trinity Presbyterian's choir accompanied by brass, woodwinds, percussion, and pianist Gayle Martin Henry. Barr and Thurman will play the organ.
Cowan said he believed that flexibility would be the key for future organists seeking employment.
"What's going to be the church music of people who are 12 years old now?" Cowan asked. "We don't know." Organists should play multiple instruments, he said, and be open to a variety of service formats.
Many churches have added contemporary "praise bands" to help fill pews, Krieger said, but "when it comes to weddings, funerals and holidays, everyone wants the organ."
Organ Concerts
To find an American Guild of Organists "Organ Spectacular" concert, go to
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