Mark Laubach
Professor of Music
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Mark Laubach’s earliest musical training, begun at age six, included piano study with Earl Bryan Seip of Palmerton, PA, and organ study with Clinton Miller of Allentown, PA. In 1982, he received a bachelor's degree in Church Music, magna cum laude, from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, studying organ with George Markey and Donald McDonald and harpsichord with Mark Brombaugh. In 1984, he received a master's degree in Organ Performance and Literature from the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY, where he studied organ with David Craighead and harpsichord with Arthur Haas. Mr. Laubach has also performed in master classes and coached with Robert Carwithen, Wilma Jensen, Joan Lippincott, Thomas Murray, Arthur Poister, Eugene Roan, Russell Saunders, Fred Swann, and Harald Vogel. In 1984, Mr. Laubach was the recipient of a one-year appointment as Fellow in Church Music at Washington National Cathedral, serving as an apprentice to Richard Wayne Dirksen and Douglas Major.

Since winning first prize in the 1984 American Guild of Organists (AGO) National Young Artists' Competition in Organ Performance, Mark Laubach has been known and respected throughout the USA and abroad as a gifted organist. He has performed in some of the most notable concert venues in the USA and Great Britain, and he has played and lectured for national and regional gatherings of the AGO in Charleston WV, Louisville KY, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Richmond VA, and San Francisco, and of the Association of Anglican Musicians (AAM) in Lancaster PA, Washington, D.C., and Wilmington DE. In the USA, he has performed at the Kennedy Center, and the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Since January 1986, Mark Laubach has served as Minister of Music at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Wilkes-Barre PA, where he administers a busy liturgical, choral, concert, and broadcasting schedule. In 2002, under Mr. Laubach’s leadership, St. Stephen’s large pipe organ was rebuilt by the Berghaus Organ Company of Chicago. This instrument now stands among the finest of its type in the Mid-Atlantic region, having won high praise from organists and audiences. In 1996 at St. Stephen’s, Laubach served as Music Director for the Consecration of the Right Reverend Paul Marshall as Bishop of Bethlehem. In 2000, Bishop Marshall designated St. Stephen’s the Pro-Cathedral for the diocese. Mr. Laubach continues to be active in music and liturgy endeavors within the Diocese of Bethlehem, and served as a diocesan deputy to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in Minneapolis in 2003.

Mark Laubach is a past regional chairman of AAM, a past dean and executive board member of the PA Northeast Chapter of the AGO, and a member of the Organ Historical Society. He is active in the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) in America, having participated as an organist for its summer training courses at Valley Forge in 1993 and 1994. In 1995, this same course was moved to St. Stephen's, Wilkes-Barre, and was managed by Mr. Laubach from 1996 through 1998. He continues to serve as host and organist for this annual course, which attracts nearly 200 children and adults from across the country each year.