Dr. Jennifer Pascual was appointed Director of Music at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City in 2003. She is the first woman to hold this position, one of the most prestigious sacred music appointments in the United States.
Jennifer earned a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Organ Performance from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY where she studied with David Higgs and taught undergraduate theory courses. She holds a Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance from the Mannes College of Music in New York City where she studied with Nina Svetlanova and studied organ privately with Mc Neil Robinson. She received the Bachelor of Music Degrees in Piano and Organ Performance, magna cum laude, and Music Education from Jacksonville University in Florida where she studied with Mary Lou Wesley Krosnick and William Saunders and taught both organ and piano in the University’s Continuing Education Department.
Jennifer was on the Artistic Staff of the Boys Choir of Harlem, Inc. from 1994 to 2003. She has served as an organist and choir director in the Dioceses of St. Augustine (FL) and Rochester (NY), and the Archdioceses of Newark (NJ) and New York (NY), and has served at three Roman Catholic Cathedrals. Dr. Pascual served as Professor and Director of Music of St. Joseph’s Seminary and College in New York from 2007 to 2014. She currently serves as the Director of Music of the New York Archdiocesan Festival Chorale.
Dr. Pascual is a member of the American Guild of Organists; New York Archdiocesan Music Commission, currently serving as its chair; Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians, having previously served on the Steering Committee; Liturgical Organists Consortium; EastWest Organists; Liturgy Committee for the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC; and National Association of Pastoral Musicians, where she served on the National Board and is a frequent recitalist and clinician at national conventions.
She was a finalist in the 1990 Florida First Coast Piano Competition, performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Jacksonville University Community Orchestra in 1993 while also a French Horn player in the orchestra, performed in the 1995 Bach Aria Festival in New York, was a featured soloist in the 2004 and 2012 International Bamboo Organ Festival in Manila. In 2013, she was the first American invited to perform in the VI Royal Christmas International Festival in Moscow and the regions of Russia and served as a juror during the 2014 Organ Festival at the Catholic Cathedral in Moscow. Jennifer was one of the organists for the November 2015 dedication of first pipe organ installation in the Far East Russian Federation in Vladivostok. She is a recipient of the Paderewski Medal and Theodore Presser Award. Jennifer has performed in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Philippines, Russia, Vatican City, and throughout the United States.
