Dr. Mahrt is Associate Professor and Director of Early Music Singers at the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Stanford University, President of the Church Music Association of America, and editor of Sacred Music, the oldest continuously published journal of music in North America.

Dr. Mahrt grew up in Washington State; after attending Gonzaga University and the University of Washington, he completed a doctorate at Stanford University in 1969. He taught at Case Western Reserve University and the Eastman School of Music, and then returned to Stanford in 1972, where he continues to teach early music. Since 1964 he has directed the choir of St. Ann’s Chapel in Palo Alto, which sings mass and vespers in Gregorian chant on all the Sundays of the year, with masses in the polyphonic music of Renaissance masters for the holy days.

His research interests include theory and performance of Medieval and Renaissance music, troubadours, Machaut, Dufay, Lasso, Dante, English Cathedrals, Gregorian chant, and Renaissance polyphony. He has published articles on the relation of music and liturgy, and music and poetry. He frequently leads workshops in the singing of Gregorian chant and the sacred music of the Renaissance.

Maggie Gallagher, Executive Director for the Benedict XVI Institute will join us on Friday, September 16 and give a talk about her work with the Institute, the recent highly successful Sacra Liturgia Conference and the Archdiocese of San Francisco during our dinner that evening.

Maggie Gallagher’s experience includes successfully founding two nonprofit organizations, The National Organization for Marriage and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. She was also a founding editor of two magazines: the online The National Pulse (which grew quickly under her leadership to 450,000 Facebook likes), and the Manhattan Institute’s quarterly journal of urban policy, The City Journal.

She was a nationally syndicated columnist for 17 years, an editor and a columnist at National Review, and the author or co-author of four books, most recently Debating Same-Sex Marriage (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka is an associate professor and the director of sacred music at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, where she holds the William P. Mahrt chair in sacred music.

Donelson-Nowicka serves as a Consultant to the USCCB’s Committee on Divine Worship.

As a choral conductor, Donelson-Nowicka has directed collegiate, semi-professional, amateur, monastic, and children’s choirs.

Dr. Donelson-Nowicka is currently working on a project to adapt the Gregorian chants of the Mass proper for the Spanish language. She also hosts a weekly podcast entitled “Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast.”

Dr. Horst Buchholz received his first musical training in a boys’ choir in his native Germany and studied organ and sacred music at the Berlin College of Church Music and the University of Arts, and received his Doctor of Music degree in conducting from the Indiana University School of Music.

Dr. Buchholz has held positions in cathedrals and churches throughout the United States and Europe, including the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, Colorado. He was Music Director of the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra, and has made organist and guest conductor appearances with the Colorado Symphony and Opera Colorado and has performed in major cathedrals and concert halls around the world. He has served as a member of the organ faculty at Cleveland State University; Associate Professor of Music and Director of Schola Cantorum at St. John Vianney Seminary (Denver); conducting professor and organ faculty member at Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver.  He is also Vice-President of the Church Music Association of America.