Composer, Musician Keesecker Performs Sunday in Concert

PHOENIXVILLE PA – Nationally acclaimed composer and pianist Thomas Keesecker will lead “a fun-filled hour of piano music, poetry, stories and songs” Sunday (Feb. 16, 2025) beginning at 4 p.m. at St. John’s Lutheran Church, 355 St. John’s Cir. The event is open to the public.

Keesecker is a composer and church musician as well as performer. Organizers say he is known “for his sensitive, delightful, and meditative piano arrangements of hymns.” Since 2017, they add, Keesecker has given more than 100 piano music performances in churches around the country and in Canada.

He “retired in 2019 after serving as a church musician for over 40 years in Lutheran and Roman Catholic parishes in Virginia, Montana, and Maryland,” according to his biography at an ECS Publishing Group webpage. His church music is published by several publishers, the company notes. In his current career, it says Keesecker mixes “classical technique and jazz improvisation.”

During Sunday’s concert, audience members will be encouraged to sing together on some of his hymn arrangements, as well as listen to his interpretations. The hymns will be interspersed with poetry by Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry.

Additionally, for the St. John’s concert, Keesecker is anticipated to share several of his interpretations of African-American spirituals from his published collection titled “Peace Like a River.”

Earlier, Commissioned by the Church

The concert is part of the 2024-2025 concert series at St. John’s. It is offered as musical out-reach to the community. No tickets are required, but a free-will offering of a suggested $10 donation will be welcomed.

Keesecker has a history with St. John’s. During 2010, at the church’s request, he composed “Sing to the Lord a New Song,” which was presented to retired organist Joseph J. Lewis and current music director F. Thomas Snyder III “in grateful appreciation for their many years of service.”

Then in 2022 Keesecker was commissioned by the church to compose “Word of God, Come Down on Earth,” in Snyder’s honor for his more than 30 years of music ministry at St. John’s.

The two compositions are published, respectively, by Morning Star Music Publishers and Augsburg Fortress.