Chase Castle is a music historian, organist, and choral conductor. He is currently a Benjamin Franklin Fellow and PhD candidate in Music at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Castle received a BM in Music History & Literature and Keyboard Performance at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music in Berea, Ohio under the tutelage of Nicole Keller. He serves as organist and choirmaster at St. Mary’s Church, Hamilton Village in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Castle’s research explores American revivalism across the nineteenth century, focusing especially on the politics of race in American evangelical hymnody. His current book project, Selling Salvation: Gospel Hymns and Popular Religion in Nineteenth-Century America, uncovers African American and white musical influences in the formation of the gospel hymn, a popular sacred genre that rose to prominence at the end of the nineteenth century. Unlike previous scholarship that often separates Black from white histories and treats African American music primarily in terms of spirituals, Castle’s research casts a wider net to consider how racial politics played out in widespread, popular, sacred practices. He has authored an article published in Journal of the Society for American Music, is the recipient of several nationally-competitive fellowships, and has curated and been a recording artist for many exhibitions.
Castle has performed in master classes with Todd Wilson, Marie-Louise Langlais, and James David Christie. He has played concerts in Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Castle spent summers of 2017-2019 as the resident organist and choirmaster at the Squirrel Island Chapel in Squirrel Island, Maine. In 2017 he released an original Americana album with a group called The Moonlighters from Cleveland, Ohio. He enjoys collaborating with other scholars and musicians and promoting diverse artistic projects.