Music Staff
Joseph came to Saint John’s Episcopal Church in June 2015. During his tenure the parish commissioned the new chancel organ by Schoenstein & Co. He founded the parish’s Music at Midday series, which regularly features guest performers from around the country and homemade meals. He founded and conducts the Oklahoma Bach Choir, an ensemble dedicated to performing the sacred works of J. S. Bach with period instruments. He received his MM from The Juilliard School and his BM from Westminster Choir College in organ performance, having studied organ with Diane Belcher, Ken Cowan, and Paul Jacobs and conducting with Kent Tritle. His playing has been broadcast live on WWFM The Classical Network, and he has been interviewed for Public Radio Tulsa 88.7 and 89.5. He is Chair of Planned Giving for the Association of Anglican Musicians and is Chair of Fundraising for the Dallas Boys Course of the Royal School of Church Music-America. He is the most recent past Dean of the Tulsa Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and he has served on the Chamber Music Tulsa Board of Directors.
Zachary Malavolti is a conductor, composer, and musical clinician originally from Tulsa. As the Associate Director of Music/Composer-In-Residence at Saint John’s, he directs the parish choir, youth choristers, and the all-professional Chamber Choir which offers weekly choral evensongs. He is also the Artistic Director of the Tulsa Chorale and the Bartlesville Chorale. Dr. Malavolti has conducted and prepared musicians throughout Oklahoma in performances with the Tulsa Symphony, OKC Philharmonic, OK Mozart Festival, Saint John’s Baroque Orchestra, The University of Oklahoma, and The University of Tulsa.
Before returning to Oklahoma, Dr. Malavolti was the Assistant Conductor of The Collegiate Chorale in New York City where he assisted in preparing the symphonic chorus for performances around the world with esteemed conductors such as Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Charles Dutoit, and Alan Gilbert. At this time, he was also the Conductor-In-Residence of the MUSET Homeschool Orchestra in Kingston, New York.
Dr. Malavolti is a graduate of The University of Tulsa (BM) where he was a prize-winning composition student under Joseph Rivers and Roger Price. At the Bard Conservatory of Music (MM), he studied both choral and orchestral conducting with James Bagwell and Harold Farberman. He completed his doctorate at The University of Oklahoma (DMA) under the supervision of Richard Zielinski and David Howard. His research is on colonial American choral music and its later use by the twentieth century American composer Henry Cowell.
Noah Smith is Organ Scholar at Saint John's Episcopal Church. He accompanies the choirs and plays for services under the mentorship of Music Director Joseph Arndt. He is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Oklahoma pursuing degrees in Organ and Piano Performance, studying with Adam Pajan and Jeongwon Ham. He is also currently a technician at the Red River Pipe Organ Company. He grew up in Russellville, Arkansas where he attended All Saints’ Episcopal Church. A National Merit Scholar, he is the recipient of a number of music scholarships at OU. He was named OU’s Outstanding Undergraduate Organ Student for the 2021–2022 academic year. He won both the OU Young Artist Competition and the OU Rising Stars Competition in 2021. In 2020, he was awarded prizes by the Little Rock Musical Coterie, the OKC Ladies Music Club, and the Hyechka Club of Tulsa.
Michael Bedford is Organist/Choirmaster Emeritus and President of the American Guild of Organists. Before his retirement in May 2015, he served as Organist/Choirmaster and Composer-in-Residence at Saint John's Church for twenty-five years. He holds the BM, BME and MM degrees from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, and the DMA degree from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. His teachers include Mary Fisher Landrum, Richard J. Tappa, Emmet G. Smith and Dale Peters. In 1972-73 he studied organ on a Fulbright scholarship at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany with Michael Schneider. An award-winning composer, he now has over two hundred titles in print with fifteen different publishers. He has served as organ recitalist, as well as clinician and workshop leader for children's and youth choir festivals, handbell festivals, hymn festivals and organ workshops throughout the United States.