Competing against students from Yale and Eastman, OU organ student Chris Ganza won the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition. Chris will perform a concert in June 2012 at the Albert Schweitzer Festival.

Ganza has also won the prestigious Rodland Scholarship Competition and the Paul and Ruth Manz Scholarship Competition. The Rodland Scholarship Competition was established to honor the late John Rodland. First prize includes $9,000 and a featured performance at the annual John Rodland Hymn Festival in Ridgewood, NJ. The Paul and Ruth Manz scholarship was established by Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, to honor the contributions of both Paul and Ruth Manz to the congregation over the 37 years of their service there.The winner receives $3,000.00.

A scholarship honoring Stan Kann, the organist who played the Mighty Wurlitzer at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, has been awarded to Adam Pajan, a DMA degree candidate at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Kann was a popular TV talk-show personality as well as a theater organist. A St. Louis native who majored in the classical organ during his student days at Washington University, he played at the Fox for 35 years. He died in 2008. Pajan is the second recipient of the scholarship, presented by the Stan Kann Scholarship Fund, a St. Louis organization, in conjunction with the American Theater Organ Society. The first recipient was OU Master's student Rachel Foster. The fund was established to provide grants to outstanding students who want to learn the distinctive theater organ style.

Pajan is also one of seven young organists chosen from the twenty-one official competitors who gained entry into the AGO National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance in April 2011. The semifinal round will be held at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, on Friday, May 25, 2012. The final round will be held on July 1, 2012, at Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in Nashville, Tenn., during the AGO National Convention.

The faculty, staff and students of the American Organ Institute congratulate Mr. Ganza and Mr. Pajan for their excellent representation of the University of Oklahoma.

For more information on the scholarships and competitions mentioned above, see the links below:
-Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition
-NYACOP Organ Competition
-The Paul and Ruth Manz Scholarship
-Rodland Organ Competition
-Stan Kann Organ Scholarship