Concordia Concert Series

From his days as a Singing Quaker at Friends University to performing with the Wichita Chamber Chorale, Chris has always found joy in making music. Today, you’ll find him on stages across Wichita, including Music Theatre Wichita and Wichita Grand Opera. Recent credits include Les Misérables (Javert, Stage Lights), 9 to 5 (Dick, Music Theatre Wichita), and La Cenerentola (Wichita Grand Opera). This holiday season, he’ll appear in Roxy’s upcoming production of Dwight Christmas. Chris is honored to help bring this beautiful Mendelssohn octet to life—and hopes it resonates with each listener.

Ethan Manlove, tenor, is a Wichita native and graduate of Wichita State University with a Bachelor’s of Music in Voice Performance. He has performed most recently with Roxy’s Downtown as a chorus member for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s EVITA, as well as every Sunday with two different church soloist positions. He has also performed with Opera Kansas, most recently as Ralph Rackstraw in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS PINAFORE, and with Wichita Grand Opera, both as chorus and for various fundraising events. He’s excited to join Concordia Academy for Te Deum à 8 and add a new choral work to his résumé.

Hailing from Mansfield, Ohio, soprano Rachel Fitzgerald recently made her Santa Fe Opera debut as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni (2024). This season, Fitzgerald will make her professional musical theater debut as Ado Annie in Pensacola Opera’s 2026 production of Oklahoma! Other recent performances include: Nedda (Cover) in Pagliacci (Pensacola Opera 2025), Countess Almaviva (Cover) in The Marriage of Figaro (Pensacola Opera 2025), the title role in Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night (IU-JSOM 2024), Hanna Glawari in The Merry Widow (IU Opera Theater 2023), and Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (Tel Aviv Summer Opera 2023). As a New Orleans District winner (2024 & 2025), Fitzgerald competed twice in the Gulf Coast Region of The Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, receiving an Encouragement Award in Concert work as a soprano soloist includes: Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Mozart’s Vespers, Bach’s Magnificat, and Rutter’s Magnificat. A student of Heidi Grant Murphy, Fitzgerald has completed graduate degrees at Indiana University – Jacobs School of Music University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music.

Kathleen is Delighted to be joining this group of stellar musicians for this piece; Kathleen is originally from the East Coast and performed with several small opera companies in the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas. Some favorite roles include Adalgisa in Norma, the titular role in Carmen, Agathe in Der Freischütz, La Frugola in Il Tabarro, Dame Caruthers in Yeoman of the Guard, and Suzuki in Madama Butterfly. Kathleen has also performed as a soloist for numerous choral masterworks both on the East Coast and since she has moved to Wichita in 2019, including Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Mass in B minor, St. Matthew Passion and Magnificat, Handel’s Messiah, Vivaldi’s Gloria, the Reqiuems of multiple composers including Brahms, Mozart, and Verdi, as well as other large works. Kathleen has been on the Wichita Chamber Chorale roster for the last several seasons, and has also sung with the Wichita Grand Opera Chorus in their recent performances of La Bohème, Rusalka, Candide, and Hansel and Gretel. Kathleen teaches voice at Butler Community College, Hesston College, and has a private voice studio in Wichita.

Stephanie Shelden, mezzo-soprano, is a native of Wichita, KS, and a sought-after performer and teacher. She made her Wichita Grand Opera debut in fall 2024 as the Third Wood Sprite in Rusalka and returned to the company shortly after to sing Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel. In Spring 2025 she covered Angelina in La Cenerentola with WGO. She made her Opera Kansas debut in the Spring of 2024 as Jane in The Murderess, the second-ever performance of the opera. Stephanie is a two-time district winner for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions winning at the Kansas City District in 2023 and the Tulsa District in 2025. She received her Master’s Degree from Florida State University where she studied with David Okerlund. Upon graduating, she sang as a studio artist with Central City Opera in Colorado for two seasons. Other role credits include Meriola (Two Remain) an emergency performer at Central City Opera, Dritte Dame (Die Zauberflöte), Cherubino (Le Nozze di Figaro), and Annio (La Clemenza di Tito).

Robert L. Town Distinguished Professor of Organ

Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

“Lynne Davis played with precision and ‘le bon gout.’ Her sense of style was excellent, and she clearly showed her mastery of all the French-style ornamentation.” (The Calgary Herald)  

Though American by birth, Lynne Davis’ career has been richly steeped in French music, culture, aesthetics, and style. Her career was launched by taking First Prize at the 1975 St. Albans International Organ Competition in England – the eighth organist to receive that honor since the competition’s founding in 1962.  Now a leading international concert artist and master teacher, she has performed in nearly every cathedral in France, numerous major cities throughout Europe, and from coast to coast in the United States and Canada. Her activities have included being a featured performer and lecturer at two national conventions and several regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists, giving master classes and lectures about French organ literature and its history, and serving as a member of Chartres, Dallas, St. Albans, and Taraverdiev (Russia) organ competition juries. In October 2017, she served as juror for the Canadian International Organ Competition in Montréal and was a featured recitalist during the competition week. 

From the late 1970’s until 2006, Lynne Davis made France her home, having married Frenchman and Chartres International Organ Competition founder Pierre Firmin-Didot.  The couple played a major role in the French organ music scene, initiating among other things the famous 1992 exhibition and recording of “Les Orgues de Paris”, which received the prize of the Président de la Republique. Her unique living and vast working experience as well as her significant lineage of study in France makes her an authority in all French organ repertoire and many other European composers. 

She holds the Certificat d’Aptitude de Professeur d’Orgue awarded by the Republic of France.  A highly regarded teacher, she served as organ professor at the Conservatory of Music in Clamart, near Paris from 1990-2006 and from 1997 to 2006 at the French National Regional Conservatory in Caen in Normandy.  In 2006 she returned to the United States and joined the faculty of the Wichita State University School of Music that summer, holding the Robert L. Town Distinguished Professor of Organ chair at the Wichita State University School of Music in Kansas.  In addition to heading the organ program, she is the artistic director of the Rie Bloomfield Organ Series – Distinguished Guest Artists, and the Wednesdays in Wiedemann series she created in 2007 (for which she performs monthly half-hour organ recitals) which are videotaped for YouTube. 

Lynne Davis’s recordings include several compact discs, radio broadcasts and live performances, including those on the famed organ at Chartres Cathedral. Her CD, Musique pour Cathédrales, released on the Quantum label, won the coveted 5 Diapasons award in France. Lynne Davis en Concert was made on the world-renowned Cavaillé-Coll organ at the abbey church of St. Etienne in Caen in Normandy. Her most recent CD, Lynne Davis at the Marcussen organ in Wiedemann Hall was released by the university in 2010.  Her YouTube channel carries more than 65 videos of live recitals on the Marcussen organ in Wiedemann Hall at WSU. 

Ms. Davis graduated with honors in organ performance from the University of Michigan where she studied with Robert Clark.  Shortly thereafter, she moved to France and for eight years she studied with Marie-Claire Alain.  While there she also studied with Jean Langlais, Maurice and Marie-Madeleine Duruflé, André Fleury, Gaston Litaize, and Edouard Souberbielle, and partook in classes with numerous other great European master organists. 

In 2011, Lynne Davis received the Excellence in Creativity Award from Wichita State University.  Following the immense success of the American Alain Festival which she organized at Wichita State University to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jehan Alain, she was awarded as a French citizen the prestigious distinction of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication in 2012.  In 2013, she received the medal of the city of Wichita from Mayor Carl Brewer and in 2016 the Burton Pell award from the Wichita Arts Council. In April 2021, she was promoted to Full Professor at the university.

Her most recent endeavor is the translation from French to English of the 350-page book on Jehan Alain by Aurélie Decourt-Alain to be published in 2026 by Wayne Leupold Editions. 

Lynne Davis is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.