Timothy E. Albrecht

For 40 years, Dr. Timothy E. Albrecht held a joint faculty appointment as professor of church music at Candler and as professor of music in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Music. He also served as Emory University organist for the length of his tenure. He retired at the close of the 2021-2022 academic year.

Albrecht has authored twelve published volumes of Grace Notes for Organ I-XII (Augsburg Fortress, 1987-2006) and has recorded nine solo compact discs, including several Bach CDs and recordings of his own compositions. He is currently researching Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier.

A renowned performer, he has delighted international audiences from Alaska to the Andes, Chicago to China. The American Organist, the most widely read journal devoted to organ and choral music in the world, hails his “creative, fertile imagination” and “energized, electric performances.” Desmond Tutu once wrote Albrecht regarding an upcoming performance saying, “I am so looking forward to that … knowing you will play as if your life depended on it!”

As he did throughout his time at Emory, Albrecht leads workshops around the country for the American Guild of Organists, has taught a master class at the Juilliard School and has taught many summers in Vienna, Austria. A member of the American Guild of Organists, Albrecht also served Emory University by performing at dozens of events annually and sitting on several committees and advisory boards.

In 1999, Albrecht was awarded the Wittenberg Award from The Luther Institute in Washington, D.C., for lifelong contributions to Lutheran church music. He is a Life Member of Cambridge University in England, where he has spent two sabbaticals, and he represented the United States at the Sixth International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, East Germany.

Albrecht is a member of Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church on Emory’s campus, where he is Organist Laureate.