Chad Fothergill

Chad Fothergill serves the Chapel organist as well as the primary organist for Duke Divinity School. In conjunction with the university organist, Fothergill leads and supports congregational singing at Chapel services and university ceremonies in the Chapel. In addition to accompanying the Chapel Choir, he mentors the Chapel’s organ scholar and performs at weekly organ demonstrations as well as in Chapel concerts. At the Divinity School, he assists with the planning and leadership of weekday liturgies.

Prior to his appointment at Duke, he was interim co-director of the Institute of Liturgical Studies at Valparaiso University, editor of CrossAccent: Journal of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, and held visiting faculty appointments at Gustavus Adolphus College and the University of Delaware. He continues to serve as cantor at the Lutheran Summer Music Academy and Festival, a four-week summer program in church music for high school students.

Fothergill completed degrees in organ performance at Gustavus Adolphus College and the University of Iowa. He is a doctoral candidate in musicology at Temple University, Philadelphia, and researches the social and vocational histories of Lutheran cantors from the Reformation through the time of J. S. Bach. As a scholar-performer, he is frequently engaged as a worship leader, speaker, writer, consultant, and composer. He is author of Sing with All the People of God: A Handbook for Church Musicians and has fulfilled commissions for articles, blogs, compositions, editorials, reviews, and reference entries for several worship resources and professional journals.

Fothergill has presented solo recitals, lecture-recitals, hymn festivals, workshops, and papers at gatherings of, among others: the American Guild of Organists; Haydn Society of North America; National Worship Conference of the Evangelical Lutheran and Anglican Churches of Canada; North American Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music; Society for Christian Scholarship in Music; and congregations throughout the United States.