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About the Music at the Meeting House Series
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Kathryn Steere, founder and long-time organizer
of Music at the Meeting House.
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Music at the Meeting House was founded by Kathryn Steere, the Church's Director of Outreach, in the fall of 1990. The
first program featured an organ concert by her son Randall Steere on the historic E.W. Lane pipe organ, accompanied by Ross Tucker on
the trumpet. Ever since then, the series has sponsored six to eight musical events at the Meeting House each year, dividing the season
between fall and spring. Over four hundred singers and instrumentalists have performed in the approximately 180 concerts that have taken place. The 2019-2020 season marks the series' thirtieth year.
The concerts over the last thirty years have offered a wide variety of high-quality religious and secular music, both vocal
and instrumental. The range has been enormous. We have hosted praise groups; Christian soft rock bands; Gospel choirs; traditional
church choirs and church-based singing groups — as well as inspired soloists, duos, and trios. We have had concerts featuring country,
soft rock and folk traditions, as well as concerts featuring the compositions of Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi. We have devoted many concerts
to old-fashioned hymn singing, to the hymns of a single composer, or even to a single hymn (Amazing Grace). We try always to have a
Christmas musical program, including the Christmas Story, every year. Organ concerts and concerts featuring other instruments or groups of instruments also contribute to our sacred offerings.
On the secular side, the range is also great.
In the folk tradition, we have sponsored old-time fiddle music, barbershop quartets
(male and female), and Dixieland, bluegrass, and other folk bands. Our organ and piano concerts include secular as well as sacred music.
We have hosted many choral groups, singing both religious and temporal songs. We have featured opera singers from Rhode Island College.
We have held classical chamber music concerts (string quartets, woodwind ensembles), as well as concerts featuring brass, acoustic guitar
, saxophone, flute, harp, and a mixture of instruments. We have held events featuring the works of a single musician — like Stephen Foster
or Glenn Miller. We have held concerts to commemorate historical events and regions of the country.
The Meeting House is small, and therefore an excellent space to feature the non-augmented instrument and the unaided voice. With
an appropriately high ceiling, plaster walls, and much exposed wood, its acoustics are excellent. Its small size also lends intimacy to the
concerts, with the performers sitting or standing very close to the main-floor audience and basically on the same level with them. The
balconies also provide an excellent place to experience a concert, with the sounds floating gently or resolutely up to the listeners. Many regular concertgoers prefer sitting there.
Within this rich variety of programming, Music at the Meeting House has a few overall themes and objectives. One is that each year's series will contain several concerts with a spiritual
message. A second objective is to support and encourage the performance of live music in an era where it is challenged by so many alternatives. In this vein, another objective is to encourage young
performers — and include at least one or two concerts each season where they can display and develop their talents. Moreover, in this regard, we try to encourage concertgoers after each event to meet
the performers and socialize with them during the time for refreshments that follows each of our concerts. Our final objective is to strive to ensure that all of our concerts, no matter what their type, are of
high quality, so that the series can truly be called "eclectic" in the original meaning of that term.
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