Thirty years ago Alec Gordon, then the organist of Bridge Street Church, heard a young girl play the piano, and invited her to try out the organ. "One day you'll be the organist here", he told her.
That seemed unlikely. Gordon was a master who even owned his own pipe organ. In contrast, this was the girl's first time, and anyway, she didn't belong to the United Church, a limitation Susan Richardson thought sufficiently significant that she highlighted it to her interviewers at Bridge Street 25 years later.

But in 2001 Bridge Street hired an organist who rides a Vespa to work, plays Cirque du Soleil themes in her office, wears rabbit ears at Easter, antlers at Christmas, and who didn't belong to the United Church. The cheerful persona masks an experienced and exacting musician who's career as a church music director began in 1976 with St. Michaels Church in Belleville, continuing later at St. Joseph's Church in Belleville.

No stranger to the musical community in the Quinte area, Susan has directed the Belleville Choral Society for over ten years. She is a frequent performer in local musical productions, an organist in local funeral homes, a piano and voice teacher, and a solo voice performer at various venues. In 1998 she was awarded the Quinte Arts Council Arts Recognition Award for her contribution to the musical life of this community, and was recently awarded a fellowship in the Faculty of Liturgical Musicians in recognition of her outstanding musical leadership in the worship setting.

The hiring committee's reaction to her concern? She'd simply be true to tradition. Alec Gordon, they informed her, had been a Baptist. His successor, Anglican, and his successor, Seventh Day Adventist. Bridge Street hadn't had a United Church organist in 50 years.

Bridge Street Church • 60 Bridge Street E • Belleville ON K8N 1L7 • T 613 962 9178 • F 613 962 5303
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