Backman featured in next Brookings Chamber Music Society concert

Minneapolis-based organist Samuel Backman will be featured on the Founders Recital Hall organ at the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center for the second concert in the Brookings Chamber Music Society series Friday, Oct. 6.

The performance starts at 7:30 p.m. It will feature works by composers A. Herbert Brewer, Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Borowski, Naji Hakim, Michael Praetorius, Mieczysław Surzyński and John Philip Sousa.

Backman is director of sacred music at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Minneapolis, where he chairs a multifaceted music program across three campuses. He serves as the principal organist and as conductor and founder of the Holy Cross Choir, St. Helena Singers and Tenebrae Choir.

He previously held positions at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Golden Valley, Minnesota; the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota; St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Ardmore, Oklahoma; St. Paul’s on the Green Episcopal Church in Norwalk, Connecticut; and the University Church in Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.

Backman has been featured as an organ recitalist for conferences hosted by the American Guild of Organists and the Church Music Association of America. His performances have also been featured on “Pipedreams,” an American Public Media program hosted by Michael Barone. He is a composer and arranger of music for choir, organ, piano and chamber ensembles, and his compositions have been published by Paraclete Press. In January 2024, he will debut “Symfonia Kolęd,” a cyclic, four-movement symphony for organ based on the melodies of traditional Polish Christmas carols.

Backman received his bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College, his master’s degree from the Yale School of Music and his doctorate from the University of Oklahoma.

Brookings Chamber Music Society season subscriptions and tickets to individual concerts are available now by calling the South Dakota State University School of Performing Arts in the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center at 605-688-5187. The series is sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the South Dakota Arts Council and Arts Midwest.

For more information, visit the Brookings Chamber Music Society.