A celebration of the organ and of a life of service to the Atlanta arts community

The annual Elizabeth B. Stephens International Organ Competition is dedicated to the memory of a remarkable woman and the legacy she left behind.

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The interior of Peachtree Road United Methodist Church of Atlanta is a labyrinthine realm of towering white columns and long, echoing corridors. It captures that classic Methodist aesthetic: at once majestic and full of spiritual reverie, while at the same time solemn and unadorned. It is a place where whispered voices resonate across cavernous chambers and a gentle stillness overtakes visitors in a manner that makes the hustle and bustle of Buckhead seem lost in another dimension.

It is not difficult to see why such immaculate grandeur and ethereal acoustics would be the scene of the Elizabeth B. Stephens International Organ Competition. But for competition organizer Sally Stephens Westmoreland, the location is inextricably linked to a remarkable woman and the legacy she left behind.

“It’s named for my mom, who died six years ago, right before Covid,” she explains. “It was pretty good timing on her part, so we could have great celebrations of her life.” Westmoreland and her two brothers decided that something more substantial than the usual memorial service was called for. “We came away from it wanting to do something that really did keep her legacy alive.”

Although Stephens had been an organist at Peachtree Road UMC for 27 years, her accomplishments reached far and wide across the Atlanta community, and she devoted herself extensively to the city’s thriving arts community. “Really, she was much more involved on an hourly basis in helping arts organizations.”

Stephens joined the Atlanta Symphony Associates in 1972, a group of volunteer women who helped to run the symphony office. “There were not a lot of people who were there administratively,” Westmoreland explains. “It was just trying to pay for Robert Shaw by the skin on their chin and relying on these women to get the rest of the stuff done in terms of general managing behind the scenes with symphony players, rehearsals and everything that went on. It was a big ask, and those women did a great job.”

Stephens eventually moved on from the ASA to another Atlanta institution, the Center for Puppetry Arts. By the time she passed in 2020, Stephens had been the organization’s longest-serving board member. Westmoreland began reaching out to the CPA and other organizations for ideas on how to celebrate her mother’s memory, but nobody seemed to have anything that really stood out. 

A chance meeting with Scott Atchison, director of music and organist at Peachtree Road UMC, finally gave Westmoreland the vision she’d been seeking. She had been considering sponsoring an organ concert series at the church when Atchison suggested it be a full-fledged competition. 

“I said, ‘How do you do that?’” recalls Westmoreland. “He said ‘I have no idea — but we’ll find out!’” Their findings soon paid off, and the inaugural competition was held in 2022. “We might have been a little more Catholic-minded than we needed to be because we didn’t give the applicants any required repertoire. The whole point was to give them the opportunity to be as creative as they wanted to be in coming up with their own program design.”

Applicants were given the opportunity to submit recorded applications for a bid to be one of six performing finalists. Westmoreland had been thinking the competition would be lucky to receive 40 applications but was pleasantly surprised when 72 arrived. The international market responded enthusiastically, and the finalists ended up consisting of players from France, South Korea, Italy and England. 

“None were from the United States, which was astonishing,” says Westmoreland.

Additional refinements to the application process and competition came in subsequent years, and the event is now both free to the public and live streamed all over the world. Applicants compete for cash prizes of $12,000, $6,000 and $3,000, all underwritten by Westmoreland and her brothers. This year’s chief judge is British organist, pianist and composer Jeremy Filsell, director of music of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Bradenton, Florida.

All finalists will present a self-selected work from the classical canon written before 1750, as well as Kairos by Pamela Decker. Westmoreland emphasizes that, with the exception of the Decker piece, the tremendous amount of breathing room afforded to the contestants in designing their program is an important part of the process. “We want to be sure that they really do have carte blanche on picking what they’re going to pick. The entire program design, how they play technically, how they engage with the audience — that’s all being taken into account.”

Westmoreland is enthusiastic about the future of the competition and notes that her long-term goal is for players to perform a piece commissioned specially for the event. In the meantime, the peaceful resonance of those long, immaculate corridors will soon be filled with the celestial aura of competitive spirit. 

Where and when

Final round recitals take place at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., noon, 3 p.m., 4 p.m. and 5 p.m on Wednesday, June 24. The Elizabeth B. Stephens International Organ Competition kick-off recital happens at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 24. The finalist round recitals will be at 10 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Saturday, June 27.

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Jordan Owen began writing about music professionally at the age of 16 in Oxford, Mississippi. A 2006 graduate of the Berklee College of Music, he is a professional guitarist, bandleader and composer. He is currently the lead guitarist for the jazz group Other Strangers, the power metal band Axis of Empires and the melodic death/thrash metal band Century Spawn.