Congregation member Cheryl Ryder has been actively engaged with the music at First Lutheran for about a decade as a singer, organist, conductor and coordinator of many special musical events. She is the managing director of Canto Armonico, First Lutheran’s Ensemble in Residence. She had previously served for thirty-two years at The Church of the Advent in Boston as singer, editor of many motets, and substitute conductor and organist. A graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard and Boston universities, she has studied organ with Nancy Granert, Christa Rakich, Brian Jones and Harald Vogel, and has participated in master classes with Klaas Bolt, Fenner Douglass, and Frank Taylor, and in many European study tours led by Joan Lippincott. She has been a frequent visitor to Leipzig since the Bach-Year 1985.