The pipe organ is a musical instrument commonly used in churches or cathedrals that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called wind) through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have multiple ranks of pipes of differing timbre, pitch and loudness that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.

A pipe organ has one or more keyboards (called manuals) played by the hands, and a pedalboard played by the feet, each of which has its own group of stops. The organ's continuous supply of wind allows it to sustain notes for as long as the corresponding keys are depressed, unlike the piano and harpsichord, the sounds of which begin to decay immediately after attack. The smallest portable pipe organs may have only one or two dozen pipes and one manual; the largest may have over 20,000 pipes and seven manuals.

Ken Cowan is a Canadian organist. A native of Thorold, Ontario, he has toured extensively in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and currently serves as Assistant Professor of Organ and Coordinator of Organ and Sacred Music at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. He has made numerous recordings, most on the JAV Label. Cowan is a graduate of both The Curtis Institute of Music (Bachelor of Music) and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music (Master of Music and Artist Diploma). He has held positions at Saint Bartholomew's Church, St. James Episcopal Church, and the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York City, and Saint Clement's Church, Philadelphia. He has also been on the roster of Associate Organists for the famous Wanamaker Grand Court Organ in Philadelphia. Cowan has won many national and international competitions and has been a featured recitalist at the last three national conventions of the American Guild of Organists. Cowan lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife Lisa Shihoten. Effective July, 2012 He will serve as a faculty member at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.

Cameron Carpenter (born 1981) is an American organist known for his virtuosity, showmanship, technique and arrangements for the organ.

Carpenter has bachelor's and master's degrees from The Juilliard School in New York, having studied with Gerre Hancock, John Weaver, and Paul Jacobs. Though he is not religious, Carpenter was from 2008 to 2009 the artist-in-residence at Middle Collegiate Church in New York's East Village, where he played a four-manual virtual pipe organ that he designed for the broad ranging music of that church. Carpenter ended his residency in July 2009.

A champion of virtual pipe organs, Carpenter has been referred to as "extraordinary", "the most controversial organist in the world" and "meshing virtuosity with musical intelligence" while also attracting criticism.

Early in 2008, Telarc signed Carpenter to an exclusive five-album recording contract. His Telarc debut album, Revolutionary, was recorded as a CD and DVD at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City, and released September 23, 2008. The title comes from Carpenter's transcription of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude. The album made Carpenter the first organist ever to receive a Grammy nomination in the category Best Solo Instrumental Performance (without orchestra) for a solo album. His first commercial album was a 2006 CD/DVD, Pictures at an Exhibition, on SeeMusicDVD. It includes his arrangement of the programmatic piano work by Modest Mussorgsky, and his own improvisatory "New York City Sessions." Visuals for the Moussorgsky were created by Marshall Yaeger and his Kaleidoplex. The recording was made at Trinity Church, New York.

Sarah Willis is a novelist and short story writer. She lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, USA. Her father, Kirk Willis, was an actor and director at the Cleveland Play House. Theater and the arts have informed much of Willis’ work, especially her second novel, The Rehearsal, which is about a theater troupe preparing a performance of Of Mice and Men. Her work is often set in either Cleveland, Ohio or Chautauqua, New York.

Her first novel, Some Things That Stay was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction 2000, and was awarded The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature 2000. Some Things That Stay was made into a movie which opened in Canada in October, 2004.

She has published short fiction in Book Magazine, Confrontation, Crescent Review, (nominated for a Pushcart Prize), Vincent Brothers Review, Rockford Review, Whiskey Island Review, Riverwind, No Roses Review, Artful Dodge, The Missouri Review, and the anthology, Our Mothers Our Selves. She has published personal essays in The Plain Dealer in their Sunday magazine.