Josh Ring

Dr. Ring has been a professor at Olivet Nazarene University in the School of Music since 2019. He loves working with students in the classroom and on the stage, as he often serves as an accompanist for student recitals. He teaches music theory, aural skills, organ, composition and piano. Dr. Ring has been featured on the radio program Pipedreams and has performed at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany as well as in the Netherlands, Brazil and across the Midwest. He also recorded the album, “Fanfare for a New Century: The Organ Works of Aaron David Miller” on the 2010 Ruffatti organ in the Betty and Kenneth Hawkins Centennial Chapel at Olivet.

As an organist, Dr. Ring won the 2019 Organ Scholar Competition at the Immanuel Lutheran Church of Evanston, IL, won first place in the 2018 Young Organists Scholarship Competition from the Fox Valley American Guild of Organists (AGO), is a 2016 recipient of the E. Power Biggs Fellowship Award from the Organ Historical Society (OHS), and has been a recipient of the Kay Hotchkiss Scholarship from the Rockford AGO every year from 2016 to 2021. Dr. Ring was also a quarter finalist in the 2019 Mikael Tariverdiev International Organ Competition. He has performed in master call with such international artists as Olivier Latry, Nathan Laube, Craig Cramer, Stefan Engles and Wilma Jensen. While a student at Olivet he was also the recipient of the Walter B. Larsen Award & Naomi Larsen Scholarship, the School of Music highest honor.

Dr. Ring was chosen as a performer for the AGO Student Commissioning Project, where he collaborated with composer Joshua Malavé on a new composition for organ solo. In 2018, Josh premiered Boricua written by Malavé and performed it numerous times across the Midwest. (View the performance here.)

Dr. Ring earned his DMA in Organ Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Iowa (UI), where he also earned his Masters of Arts in Organ Performance. Studying organ with Gregory Hand, he was a recipient of the Rahn and Frawley organ Fellowship from the UI School of Music. He also earned his Masters of Music in Composition with David Maki and his Performer’s Certificate in Organ with James Russell Brown, both from Northern Illinois University. He also received his Bachelor’s of Music, summa cum laude, from ONU in Music Composition with Karen Ball and Piano Performance with Gerald Anderson. While at Olivet he also studied organ with Timothy Nelson and guitar with Freddie Franken. 

His past organ teachers include Melanie Sigafoose, James Russell Brown and Timothy Nelson, and his piano teachers include JeongSoo Kim, Karen Ball, Gerald Anderson, Ovid Young and Brenda Conroy. He has also studied composition with David Maki, Ted Hatmaker, Robert Fleisher and Karen Ball.