Most Reverend Earl K. Fernandes was ordained and installed as the 13th Bishop of the Diocese of Columbus on May 31, 2022. He was serving as pastor of St. Ignatius of Loyola Church in Cincinnati, Ohio from 2019 until his ordination and installation. From 2016-2019, he was a member of the Staff of the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C. From 2008-2016, he was the Dean of the Athenaeum of Ohio/Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary of the West in Cincinnati and an associate professor of moral theology. He holds a doctorate in moral theology from the Alphonsian Academy in Rome.

He is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. He is also on the Episcopal Advisory Board for Franciscan University.

He is a member of the National Catholic Bioethics Center. From 2012-2016, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Association of Catholic Theological Schools. Since 2012, he has been a Knight of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Dr. William P. 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.

Rev. Robert C. Pasley, KCHS, has been a member of the CMAA since his ordination.

He is a priest of the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey.

Because of his association with Msgr. Richard Schuler, he was introduced to the Sacred Music Colloquium and has attended most of the colloquia held since their foundation in 1990.

Father Pasley received a B.A. in Philosophy from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, Philadelphia, an M.A. in Dogmatic Theology from Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, and an M.A. in Education from Seton Hall University. He was ordained by the Most Reverend George H. Guilfoyle in 1982.

On October 13, 2000 he was appointed Rector, by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, of the newly established Tridentine-rite Parish of Mater Ecclesiae, Berlin, New Jersey (materlatin.org). Mater Ecclesiae was the first diocesan-run Extraordinary Form parish in the United States.

Susan Treacy, Ph.D., is Professor of Music Emerita at Ave Maria University, from which she retired in July of 2019. Prior to AMU, she taught at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Luther College, and Emory University, where she was a Mellon Faculty Fellow in the Humanities.

Dr. Treacy holds the Ph.D. in historical musicology from the University of North Texas; her B.Mus. and M.Mus. degrees are from Oberlin Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music.

At Ave Maria University Dr. Treacy taught music history, art song literature, special topics courses, sacred music courses, and Gregorian chant; in addition, she directed the Women’s Schola Gregoriana and the Men’s Schola Gregoriana.

David Hughes is a composer, conductor, and organist who is in international demand as a recitalist and an instructor of Gregorian chant.

He served for thirteen years as Organist and Choirmaster at St. Mary’s Church in Norwalk, Connecticut, where he developed a program of seven choirs, including the professional St. Mary’s Schola Cantorum, the volunteer St. Mary’s Choir, and the St. Mary’s Student Schola, a comprehensive program of musical education for children.

He directs Viri Galilæi, an ensemble of men from the tristate New York area who gather weekly to sing Vespers and medieval polyphony from facsimiles of original manuscripts. Hughes is Director of Music at St. John Fisher Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut, and serves as a consultant to several parishes in Connecticut looking to expand their musical programs.

Having trained under experts in Gregorian chant and Renaissance music and having performed in several early music ensembles, Mary Ann served as Music Director at three different parishes in the San Diego diocese over a period of twenty years.

In 2019, Mary Ann founded a new apostolate, “Canticle”, where she now focuses on teaching others in the U.S. and Mexico about her love for sacred music, particularly in programs for children. She directs the premier youth schola for Canticle, the Jubilate Deo Choir, comprised of forty young Catholics who study and pray sacred music in the Catholic tradition.

Mary Ann has been a pioneer of a children’s program called Chant Camp, a week-long fun and immersive experience of sacred music and liturgical catechesis. Her professional collaborations in the area of sacred music include CMAA (faculty and board member), the Benedict XVI Institute, and ChantWorks.

Dr. MeeAe Cecilia Nam,  known for her musical versatility, sensitivity and genuine interpretation (the Denver Post), has had a rich performance experience as a soloist in recitals, oratorios, sacred music, chamber and orchestral concerts, and stage works throughout the United States, Germany, Austria, and South Korea.

In addition to her position as Professor of Voice at Eastern Michigan University, she has been on the faculty of the Church Music Association of America and at the Vianden International Summer Festival and School in Luxembourg. She has also been Guest Artist and Clinician at numerous institutions.

Dr. Nam published a critical edition of Gouvy’s songs in two volumes with EC Schirmer in 2018. These two volumes are a unique and exclusive publication, and a valuable contribution to song literature. They are the result of her extensive scholarship and research in France, Germany, and the United States.

Nationally recognized for his leadership in sacred music education, Michael Olbash founded the Boston Chapter of Choristers Guild, for which he served as president for eight years, served for many years as a festival supervisor and member of the Board of Directors of the American Federation Pueri Cantores, and currently directs the upper school chorus at Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Still River, Massachusetts.

An active member of the American Guild of Organists (AGO), he holds the
Choirmaster and Colleague certificates from the AGO, has lectured at both regional and national conventions, and is the recipient of both the AGO Choirmaster Prize and the S. Lewis
Elmer Award. He holds music degrees from Harvard University and St. Joseph’s College of Indiana, and resides in Massachusetts with his wife Mary Ann and their four children.

Jeffrey Morse is a conductor, singer, and teacher of Gregorian Chant. A student of Dr. Mary Berry (Cambridge, UK) in Gregorian Chant and Gregorian Semiology. He also attended Sonoma State University and the Université François Rabelais de Tours (France). He was a student of Dr. Alise Brown at the University of N. Colorado in Ward Method, a method of teaching music, both modern and Gregorian notation and theory to school children. A native of Northern California, he however spent much of his formative years in England where he was exposed to the English choral tradition and especially the tradition of child choristers.

Mr. Morse is widely looked upon as a leader in the teaching of Gregorian Chant in the U.S and has given many workshops for adults and children in this matchless music of the Church. He is a regular Chant conductor and teacher at the annual Colloquium of the Church Music Association of America. Enthusiastic and missionary about this music, he has been called “disciplined in his approach, but fun and amusing, displaying a complete knowledge and understanding of his subject and its practice and use in the Church of the 21st century. He is currently Precentor and Director of Music at St Joan of Arc church in Phoenix, Arizona

He will also be teaching the CMAA’s Chant Intensive course this summer (Summer courses, June 18-22, 2024).

Edward Schaefer hold four degrees in music, including the DMA in Liturgical Music from The Catholic University of America. His post-doctoral studies indlued work with chant scholars around the world, studies at Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique in Paris, and singing for six months with Le Choeur Gregorien de Paris. He is an expert in the musical notation of Carolingian chant, the oldest musical notation in the Western world, and he has a particular interest in the interpretation of chant, and its restoration to the liturgy.

Dr. Schaefer has directed choirs dedicated to the musical patrimony of the Church for his entire career. His groups have been recognized with invitations to sing in the United States at state, regional and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and The Music Educators Association, and in Europe at an international chant conference honoring the twenty-fifth anniversary of Le Choeur Gregorien de Paris.

Dr. Schaefer is the translator of Daniel Saulnier’s Les Modes Gregoriens and Le Chant Gregorien, both published by Solesmes. He is also the author of Catholic Music Through the Ages, published by Hillenbrand. Currently, he is completing Antiphonale Duplex, an Antiphonal for Benedictine Lauds and Vespers, in which the nuances of Carolingian notation are incorporated into the modern square-note chant notation.

Dr. Schaeer is a secular oblate of the monastery of Our Lady of Clear Creek in Oklahoma.

He is also the founder and president of The Collegium, a college that embraces tradition in the pursuit of truth. All faculty and staff of The Collegium take the Oath Against Modernism, as well as the Oath of Fidelity. Collegium students engage in a holistic program of academic, spiritual, physical, and social formation. More information is available at www.the-collegium.org.

Lucas Tappan is the founder and president of the Catholic Academy of Sacred Music, founder and director of the Most Pure Heart of Mary Schola Cantorum and the Director of Liturgy and Music for Most Pure Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Topeka, Kansas. Through the apostolate of the Academy he and his team work with around 200 students throughout the week during the school year, teaching sight-singing, ear-training, music theory and all the many wonderful aspects of Sacred Music in the Roman Catholic tradition.

He graduated from Benedictine in 2004 with degrees in Music and Theology. He earned his Master of Music in Church Music (organ performance) in 2009 and his Doctorate of Musical Arts in Church Music (choral conducting) from the University of Kansas.

In 2012, he was privileged to spend six weeks observing the training of choristers at the Madeleine Choir School at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, Utah — an experience that has greatly shaped the way he trains choristers.

In January of 2016 the MPHM Schola Cantorum traveled to Rome to sing at St. Peter’s Basilica — joing the Sistine Chapel Choir — alongside several other children’s choirs from the Americas and Europe for the first Children’s Festival for Epiphany, sponsored by the Fondazione Pro Musica e Arte Sacra.

Dr. Tappan speaks and teaches nationally on the topic of children’s choirs and church music.