Todd Fair

J. Todd Fair enjoyed a long and varied career as a carillonneur. His carillon studies commenced with Frank Law at the Washington Memorial National Carillon at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in 1967. He went to the Netherlands to study with Leen’t Hart and Peter Bakker at the Dutch Carillon School from which he graduated, and where he became a faculty member in 1984. In 1979 he was appointed carillonneur of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. Returning to the United States in 1998, he served for one year as Visiting University Carillonneur at the University of Michigan. He was appointed to the new carillon position at the University of Denver in 1999. In 2013 he became organist and choir director at Zion Lutheran Church in Wilmington, Delaware. Todd died peacefully in his sleep at home on March 18, 2014, from a subdural hemorrhage after injuring his head during a fall on ice. A memorial service was held at the University of Denver during the congress of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. Another memorial was held at Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge. -- Brian Swager, Diapason, January 2015, p. 11.