Bio:
FATHER SEAN BRETT DUGGAN, O.S.B., was born on October 11, 1954 in Jersey City, New Jersey. He attended Loyola University in New Orleans and received a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance. Upon graduation he also received the University's Male Student of the Year award and the College of Music's Most Valuable Graduate award. After obtaining a Master of Fine Arts degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1979, he was employed by the Pittsburgh Opera Company for three years as pianist and assistant chorus master. He also taught piano at Carnegie Mellon and was a member of the Carnegie Mellon Trio. In 1982 he entered the Benedictine order at St. Joseph Abbey near Covington, Louisiana. He graduated summa cum laude with a Master of Arts degree in Theology from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans and was ordained to the priesthood on April 16, 1988. He served as Spiritual Director at St. Joseph Seminary College where he taught courses in music, religion and Latin, and as Director of Music and principal organist at St. Joseph Abbey.
In September 1983 Father Duggan won first prize in the Johann Sebastian Bach International Competition for pianists in Washington D.C. which entitled him, among other honors, to various concerts around the country and a two-month tour of Germany. In the "Bach Year", 1985, he gave complete performances of Bach's The Well-tempered Clavier in New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Birmingham to critical acclaim. In 1991 he participated again in the Bach Competition in Washington D.C.; this time he was one of three first-place winners, which entitled him to another round of concert engagements and a second tour of Germany.
Father Duggan has studied piano with Barbara Heartz, Maryanne Nagy, James Bastien, Joan Purswell, Nelson Whitaker, William Masselos and Paul Maillet. He has appeared with various orchestras including the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, New Orleans Philharmonic and the American Chamber Orchestra. Guest performances at numerous summer festivals have included piano and chamber music festival in La Gesse, France, the Villa Chopin near Malaga, Spain, the Taubman Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts and Lecce, Italy. Throughout the year 2000, which was the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, Father Duggan performed the complete cycle of Bach's keyboard works eight times in a series of fifteen recitals entitled Bach On the Threshold of Hope. The series was repeated in Marseilles, France, Rome, Italy and across the United States. For five weeks during July and August, Father Duggan performed his series in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to "standing room only" crowds at Wesley Church, to high critical acclaim and extraordinary enthusiasm of audiences that totaled over 5,400 people.
Father Duggan's liturgical compositions have appeared in hymnals published by The Liturgical Press and G.I.A. For five years he was the host of a weekly two-hour radio program entitled "Bach on Sunday," broadcast on the New Orleans' NPR station WWNO-FM. He has just completed a three-year residency as Visiting Professor of Piano at the University of Michigan and has accepted a position on the piano faculty at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Father Duggan is in the midst of recording the complete (non-organ) keyboard works of Bach for commercial release.
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