Margaret Vardell Sandresky

Margaret Vardell Sandresky is an organist, composer, and teacher. She graduated from Salem Academy and Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with a Bachelor of Music degree, cum laude. Continuing her education at the Eastman School of Music where she earned a Master of Music in Composition, she studied with Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers, and was an organ pupil of Harold Gleason. She was awarded a Fulbright Grant to the State Institute of Music in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where she studied organ with Helmut Walcha, harpsichord with Maria Jaeger-Jung, and composition with Kurt Hessenberg. She has held teaching positions at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the University of Texas at Austin, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and at Salem College. In Winston-Salem, where she has lived for a number of years, she has held the position of organist at the Home Moravian Church, the First Baptist Church, and at Centenary United Methodist Church. Among her commissions are those funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, and the North Carolina Music Teachers Association.