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The Director of Music may be contacted at pettitjz@trinitylutheranparkland.org
Joseph Pettit has been Director of Music at Trinity Lutheran Church since Lent 2005. His early education in organ was from Virginia Prochnow of Central Lutheran Church in Yakima, WA. He received his training in church music, organ and voice at Pacific Lutheran University, where his principal teachers were David Dahl, Mira Frohnmayer, Richard Sparks and Randall McCarty. He later specialized in early music performance practice and singing at the Academy of Ancient Music in Amsterdam under Max van Egmond.
He has performed, recorded and broadcast with many of Europe's leading early music ensembles, including La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale Gent and La Petite Bande. He founded the Amsterdam-based Columbus Consort in 1990, and the group's 1992 CD Christmas in Early America received worldwide critical acclaim; the December 2001 issue of France's Diapason magazine listed it as one of the thirty most beautiful Christmas recordings ever made. He was also employed for three years in the Netherlands Broadcasting Choir, house choir for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under many of the world's greatest conductors. He made his operatic debut in 1992 in the world premiere of Alfred Schnittke's Life with an Idiot at De Nederlandse Opera under Mstislav Rostropovich.
In 1995 Pettit became Kantor of Norway's historic Roros Kirke, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with its 1742 meantone organ. In 1997 he was the featured Bach performer on the newly restored Wagner organ in Nidaros Cathedral, Norway's national shrine, in conjunction with the city of Trondheim's 1000th anniversary celebrations. After a decade living and working in Europe, he moved to Honolulu in 1997, where he was Organ Scholar at St. Andrew's Cathedral, and later Principal Organist of Hawaii's largest church, Central Union Church (UCC). He has been on the music faculty of the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University, Chaminade University of Honolulu, St. Andrew's Priory School and PLU. He was organist and harpsichordist with the Honolulu Symphony for several seasons and has also played organ with the Seattle Symphony.