Chad Fothergill (LSM 2000) has served as cantor at Lutheran Summer Music since 2018. In addition to helping plan and lead between 40–50 daily and Sunday liturgies each season, he chairs the Eugene and Mary Sukup Church Music Program, coordinates instruction in organ and church music, has conducted the chapel choir, and attends to ways in which the immersive “laboratory” environment of LSM can serve and enrich the wider church.

Since September 2022, he has served as Chapel Organist at Duke University Chapel where, in addition to leading and supporting congregational song at services and University events, he regularly collaborates with the chapel’s choral ensembles, composes liturgical music, presents pre-concert lectures as part of the Bach cantata series, coordinates weekly demonstrations and special tours of the chapel’s three main pipe organs, and participates in the planning and leadership of weekday liturgies at Duke Divinity School.

Mr. Fothergill completed degrees in organ performance at Gustavus Adolphus College and the University of Iowa where he studied with David Fienen and the late Delbert Disselhorst. As a scholar-performer, he researches the social and vocational histories of Lutheran cantors from the Reformation through the time of J. S. Bach and is frequently engaged as a worship leader, speaker, writer, consultant, and composer. He is author of Sing with All the People of God: A Handbook for Church Musicians (Augsburg Fortress, 2020) and has fulfilled commissions for articles, blogs, compositions, editorials, reviews, and reference entries for several worship resources and professional journals.

He has presented solo recitals, lecture-recitals, hymn festivals, workshops, and papers at gatherings of, among others: the American Guild of Organists; Haydn Society of North America; National Worship Conference of the Evangelical Lutheran and Anglican Churches of Canada; North American Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music; Society for Christian Scholarship in Music; and congregations throughout the United States.

Prior to his appointment at Duke, he was interim co-director of the Institute of Liturgical Studies at Valparaiso University, editor of CrossAccent: Journal of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, served as an editorial assistant for Cambridge University Press, and held visiting faculty appointments at Gustavus Adolphus College and the University of Delaware.