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Staff
- Director of Religious Education: Mark LaPointe
- Director of Music: Vivian Montgomery
- Assistant Music Director for Youth and Intergenerational
Programs: Kate Campe
- Music Associate for Choral Conducting: Rachel Carpentier
- Parish Administrator: Steve Moore
Director of Religious Education: Mark LaPointe
Mark LaPointe took on the post of Director of Religious Education for the First Parish Churchin August of 2011. He comes to first parish after serving for nearly three years as the DRE at the Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church.
Mark has spent most of his career in higher education, teaching most recently at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he also sat on the board of the Meadville UU Church. He holds a BA in English, with minors in Women’s Studies and African-American Studies from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He has completed graduate work in Journalism and Communication at the University of Nevada, Reno and at the University of Washington in Seattle. He occasionally teaches courses at Endicott College in Beverly. Mark sees education as a radical, spiritual action that is at the center of Unitarian Universalist principles.
Mark is a native of Lakeville, Massachusetts. He currently resides in Salem with his husband, Jim and their son, Bryce. As a family, they love spending time outdoors, camping and enjoying nature. Their collective ambition is to visit as many national parks as they can.
Director of Music: Vivian Montgomery, PhD
Vivian Montgomery, keyboardist and conductor, is winner of First Distinction in the 1993 Warsaw (Poland) International Harpsichord Competition, and holds prizes from other American competitions. A recipient of a 1995 Solo Recitalist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Vivian earned her Bachelor of Music and her Master of Music in Early Keyboard Performance from the University of Michigan. In addition to her work as a founding member of Cecilia's Circle, an ensemble acclaimed for its programs focused on women in early music, Vivian concertizes with her dynamic recorder & harpsichord ensemble, the Galhano/Montgomery Duo. Vivian has taught harpsichord at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music and Macphail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis, and is now on the faculty of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music where she teaches harpsichord and performance practice twice a month.
Vivian completed her Doctoral work at CWRU in 2007, with a special focus on Early Music Performance Practice. She lives in Medford with her husband John and son Ezra, having moved to the Boston area for John’s position as Chair of Composition and Theory at the Longy School of Music.
Assistant Music Director for Youth and Intergenerational
Programs: Kate Campe
Originally from upstate NY, Kate has always enjoyed singing in worship and performing in the community. Kate has recently completed her Master’s in Mind, Brain, and Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, which allowed her to focus her research on children’s development and music. She has a bachelors in Music Education and Voice from Westminster Choir College, and a masters in Music Theory from Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. With over 5 years of experience conducting children, she is excited to be back at First Parish working with the Children's Choir and Youth Group. Also, this fall she is opening up a private voice studio for interested members of the parish. She wants to encourage any one who is interested to speak with her and join the fun! Kate joined the First Parish staff in January, 2011. music@uuneedham.org
Music Associate for Choral Conducting: Rachel Carpentier
Rachel Carpentier, our new Music Associate for Choral Directing, is originally from Cambria, CA, where she served as music director for an Episcopal church for three years. She came to Boston for college at Harvard, where she studied music and Sanskrit & Indian Studies (particularly Tamil language and culture). While at Harvard, she participated in both large and small choral settings, both as a chorister and conductor, and came to love the small, chamber choir setup and repertoire best. She also began to pursue the study and performance of early music, especially Renaissance polyphony. She hopes to share her love of this repertoire with First Parish, along with excellent music from other time periods and styles. Rachel is currently in her second year at Boston University pursuing a masters of music in choral conducting, and working towards completing a thesis on the music of Hernando Franco, a sixteenth-century Spanish composer active in the New World. She also maintains a private studio for piano in the North End, teaching 20 students ranging in age from 6 to adults
Parish Administrator: Steve Moore
Steve brings a wealth of relevant experience and talents — musical and otherwise — to his duties as First Parish's Administrator. Born in the Mojave Desert and raised a Unitarian Universalist, Steve has lived in Massachusetts since the age of nine. He graduated from UMass Amherst where he majored in political science and mass communications. After college, he managed Longfellow’s Bookstore in Sudbury for five years. Later, he worked as the manager of the UUA bookstore for eight years. After a several-year break to play music full time and the birth of his daughter Charlotte, he went to work for the National Park Service, managing three of their stores in Minute Man National Park. Steve then managed the retail operations at Boston Children’s Museum for several years until coming to First Parish.
Steve has always gravitated toward music of all kinds and taught himself to play the guitar, mandolin, and bass. He has always juggled playing with many various bands and performers and teaching music with more his time spent at more conventional jobs. Steve and his wife Shellie Leger were married a year ago, and they live in Cambridge with Charlotte and Shellie’s three teenagers. Shellie is a wonderful singer and she and Steve play music together as often as possible in the band Attention Shoppers or, when performing for children and families, as The Muffintops. They also very much enjoy getting away for a weekend as often as they can to Maine where Shellie grew up and Steve’s enjoyed spending time since childhood. Steve says has always felt very comfortable and at home in church communities and is supportive of the work churches do, and is excited to once again be a part of UU a congregation. Steve joined the First Parish staff in September, 2010.