Bethel College continues the 2023-24 Organ Recital Series with a familiar face, organ instructor Donna Hetrick, joined by Alan Wenger, University of Central Missouri, on trumpet.
The recital is Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m. in the Administration Building chapel and is free and open to the public.
Dr. Wenger is professor of trumpet at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, where he has been on the faculty since 2003.
He has degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Boston University and the University of North Texas. In 2014, he received the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts Outstanding Alumnus Award in Music from UNL.
His performance career has been extensive and diverse.
For six years, he served as principal solo cornet in the internationally acclaimed and award-winning Fountain City Brass Band in Kansas City, and performed with them in numerous concerts across the United States and in the UK.
He is a frequent sub with the Kansas City Symphony, has toured as a chamber musician with the Empire Brass and Bluebonnet Brass, and has performed on natural trumpet throughout the United States and Europe.
Jazz and commercial experiences include performances with the Four Tops, Mannheim Steamroller, Lou Rawls, the Temptations, Tommy Tune and the Manhattan Rhythm Kings, the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra and the Moonlight Serenade Orchestra, with whom he currently plays lead trumpet.
Wenger has a keen interest in contemporary music and has been a featured performer at the College Music Society National Convention, Electronic Music Midwest and as a soloist in the premiere performance of Randall Snyder’s Six Tableaux for Trumpet and Orchestra with Orchestra Omaha.
Dr. Hetrick is director of music and the arts at Rolling Hills Church in Overland Park, Kan., which includes the positions of organist, Chancel Choir director, bell choir director and leader of the praise band.
She also teaches organ and piano in Kansas City. Before moving to Kansas City, Hetrick was director of music and organist at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita.
She has taught organ at Bethel College since 2013 and is the administrator of the Organ Recital Series.
Hetrick enjoys many community music activities, including several recitals at Bethel on the Dobson pipe organ in the chapel and Kauffman Museum’s historic Teschemacher cabinet organ.
She has accompanied several community groups, including the Wichita Chamber Chorale, Wichita Choral Society, Newton Chorale, Central Kansas Master Chorale and Bethel College Masterworks.
In Kansas City, she has played as part of the Westwood Ensemble. She has been an instructor for two Wichita American Guild of Organists (AGO) Pipe Organ Encounters, and a presenter for the Wichita AGO Jubilee and Society of Women Engineers.
Hetrick has a B.A. in music from Bethel, where she was a student of Dr. Shirley Sprunger King and Dr. Karen Bauman Schlabaugh. She received her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts in church music and organ from the University of Kansas, where she studied organ with Dr. James Higdon and church music and organ with Dr. Michael Bauer.
Bethel is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1887 and is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel ranks at #23 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of “Best Regional Colleges Midwest” for 2023-24. Bethel was the first Kansas college or university to be named a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center, in 2021. For more information, see https://www.bethelks.edu