Peter Fekula
Senior Lecturer, Department of Liturgics, Sacred Arts and Music
EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
- A.B. Harvard College
BACKGROUND
Peter Fekula has been a choral director for over 40 years. He obtained his musical training at the Mannes School in New York and at Harvard University where he studied choral performance and early music with Jameson Marvin and was Assistant Conductor of the Harvard Glee Club. He was the Choral Director at the Synodal Cathedral of the Russian Church Abroad in New York City from 2005 to 2019.
He is a member of the Liturgical Music Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and was one of the organizers of the very first Church Music Seminar, held in Glen Cove, NY in 1987, an event that has since blossomed into the Church Music Conferences held annually in the United States and Canada. He is on the faculty of the Synodal Summer School of Liturgical Music.
Along with Protopriest Matthew Williams, Peter co-authored the Order of Divine Services published by the St. John of Kronstadt Press. For a period of over 10 years, he edited the Annual Typicon published by St. John of Kronstadt Press. He was involved in the re-edition of the Sputnik Psalomshchika (Church Singer’s Companion) by the St. Job of Pochaev Press and the publishing of the English translation of Johann von Gardner’s monograph on square notation.
Peter was the conductor of the choir that traveled from the US to Moscow, Russia and sang antiphonally, together with the Choir of the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, at Christ the Savior Cathedral during the Hierarchal Divine Liturgy served on the Great Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord, May 17, 2007, at which the Act of Canonical Communion was signed, reuniting ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate.
Peter is the musical director of the Slavonic Cappella Ensemble in New York City, a choir dedicated to the performance of Russian sacred and secular choral music. He is also presently the parish choir director at Holy Virgin Protection Church in Glen Cove (Long Island), NY.
