Karen Black, Wartburg College’s Rudi Inselmann Endowed Professor of Organ, will be the featured artist at the college’s Bach’s Lunch organ series recital on Friday, Oct. 13.

For this Bach’s Lunch series performance, Black will lead a hymn festival, “From the Heights of New Creation: A Hymn Festival Celebrating All the Saints.” The concert begins at noon in the Wartburg Chapel. Attendees are invited to bring a lunch to the Chapel Commons at 11:30 a.m. prior to the start of the event.

Assisted by Kantorei, one of Wartburg College’s mixed choral ensembles, the hymn festival will showcase several new hymns from the recent Lutheran publication “All Creation Sings,” as well as more familiar hymns. The commentary and most of the hymn introductions and accompaniments were written and composed by Black.

“A hymn festival is something between a concert and a worship service. The audience participates through singing as the theme is explored more deeply,” Black said. “In this hymn festival we celebrate saints in our lives, both those who have come before us and those in our lives now.”

Black teaches organ and church music, music theory and aural skills; serves as organist for weekday chapel; and conducts the Kantorei choral ensemble and the Wartburg Handbell Choir. She also recently served as the North Central Regional Councillor of the American Guild of Organists.

She is an active recitalist and clinician and has performed throughout the United States and in Germany. Black has served as dean of the Cedar Valley Chapter of the AGO and president-elect of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians. She also is an active member of the Organ Historical Society and ACDA.

She has been heard on the nationally broadcast “Pipedreams” program. Her essay “J. S. Bach as Theologian-Musician” appears in “Together By Grace: Introducing the Lutherans.”

Black has published organ and choral arrangements with Augsburg Fortress and Morningstar Music, including a collection of organ hymn introductions, “Shine Like the Sun.” In 2021 she released an organ album, “Ein feste Burg,” on the ARSIS label, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the installation of the Wartburg College Chapel Dobson organ.

The series will continue Nov. 10, Feb. 19, March 8 and April 12.