2025 Sacred Music Florida Judges

Soprano Kerrigan Bigelow, from North Andover, Massachusetts, is Masters Vocal Performance major at the Juilliard School, where she recently completed her Bachelors of Music. There, she is under the tutelage of Amy Burton. 

While at Juilliard, Kerrigan has enjoyed a wide variety of performance opportunities singing both traditional and contemporary opera and art song. In the ‘23-‘24 season, she debuted as Maricuccia in I Due Timidi, covered Aldimira in Erismena, sang Saariaho’s From The Grammar of Dreams as part of Juilliard’s The New Series: The Mad King and Carnegie Hall’s Fall of the Weimar Republic, and made her Alice Tully Hall debut. With The New Series in November, she performed Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire as part of the composer's 150th birthday celebration. 

In competition, Kerrigan is a New England Region Finalist of the Laffont Competition, a grant recipient of the Gerda Lissner Lieder/Song Competition, and an encouragement award winner at Opera Index. 

Most recently, Kerrigan covered the roles of Leona and Leona’s Mother in In A Grove as part of the Prototype Festival and performed the role of Flora in The Turn of the Screw at Juilliard. 

Upcoming, she will be a Vocal Fellow at Tanglewood in summer ‘25 and perform the role of La princesse in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges.  

Kerrigan is the proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship at The Juilliard School. 

Korean-American violinist Dr. Brian Bak enjoys a career as a sought after performer and teacher. Dr. Bak received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at The Juilliard School, where he was a recipient of the C.V. Starr scholarship, the Juilliard Merit Scholarship, and the Samsung scholarship. He received the prestigious Artist Diploma from Yale University, and his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from Stony Brook University. His principal mentors have included Hyo Kang, David Chan, and Philip Setzer.

Bak has been featured as a soloist with the Tampa Bay Symphony, the Central Florida Philharmonic, the Sewanee Festival Orchestra, the Florida Young Artists Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, and others. He was a winner of the 2016 Stony Brook University Concerto Competition and a featured soloist with the Stony Brook Symphony. A versatile instrumentalist, Bak is also an accomplished cellist, and has performed with the Florida Young Artists Orchestra and the Chicago Chamber Orchestra as a soloist on cello. 

An avid chamber musician, Bak is a 2 time winner of the Ackerman Chamber Music Competition. He has collaborated with renowned performers and ensembles such as the Emerson String Quartet, flautist Carol Wincenc, harpist Nancy Allen, and several members of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society. As a founding member of both the Deka String Quartet and Trio de Novo, he has held chamber music residencies at the Banff Centre, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, and the New Music for Strings Festival in Aarhus, Denmark. With the Deka Quartet, Bak served as an Artist-in-Residence through the Rockefeller Institute of Government, performing and teaching students from SUNY Schenectady and the Empire State Youth Orchestra. Trio de Novo has been praised as “a talented group who performed with detailed intensity… exceptional poise” (Sequenza 21). He has also often served as concertmaster of the New York Classical Players, leading performances and recordings, including for the album “Samuel Adler: Music for Chamber Orchestra” on Toccata Classics. Bak has also performed with the International Sejong Soloists, and the New Asia Chamber Music Society. He has been a featured guest artist for the Las Vegas Music and Wine Festival, and the Annapolis Chamber Music Festival.

Dr. Bak has held principal positions with the Juilliard Orchestra, the Juilliard Chamber Orchestra, the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, and the Yale Philharmonia. He was a selected member of The Juilliard Orchestra's China Tour in 2008, and in 2011 he was appointed by the legendary conductor Lorin Maazel to be the principal violinist of the Castleton Festival Orchestra for a series of critically acclaimed performances.

Bak has been a part of numerous renowned summer music festivals, including the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, Schlern International Music Festival in Italy, Aspen Music Festival and School, the Kennedy Center Summer Music Institute, the Castleton Festival, Music Academy of the West, Great Mountains Music Festival and School, the Pacific Music Festival, the Atlantic Music Festival, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival. Dedicated to musical outreach, Bak was a member of Lincoln Center's Community Outreach Program and was a recipient of the Gluck Community Fellowship.

As an educator, Dr. Bak has been a faculty member at the New York Music School, Music & Art of Long Island, the St. Andrew’s Conservatory, and was a Teaching Artist at Yale University. Dr. Bak’s students have won top prizes at several competitions, including the International Grande Music Competition, the Rondo Young Artist Competition, the Prima Volta Music Competition, the Crescendo International Music Competition, the Florida Federation of Music Clubs, and the New York Young Virtuoso Competition, and have been accepted into elite pre-college programs, youth orchestras, NYO2, and All-State orchestras.

In addition to his musical achievements, Bak has faced profound personal challenges in dealing with a spinal cord injury. His journey through recovery has shaped his perspective on resilience, artistry, and the healing power of music. Dr. Bak often gives lectures on his experiences and how they have shaped his understanding of neuromuscular function as it relates to playing instruments.

Brian Bak performs on a 2015 Samuel Zygmuntowicz violin.

As an organist and composer, Phoon Yu is active both in Singapore and in the United States. In Singapore, he has performed as a soloist multiple times in the Victoria Concert Hall Organ Series since 2015, as well as at the Esplanade –Theatres by the Bay and St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Previous solo recitals in the U.S. include performances in New York, NY (St. Thomas’s Church at Fifth Avenue and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine), Winter Park, FL (All Saints EpiscopalChurch), Lloyd Harbor, NY (Seminary of the Immaculate Conception), Scarsdale, NY (Hitchcock Presbyterian Church), and in Baltimore, MD (St. David’s Episcopal Church), while he performed in 2024 alongside the Orlando Sings Symphonic Chorus and the Solaria Players for their productions of J.S. Bach’s B Minor Mass

and Fauré’s Requiem in D minor in Orlando, FL. His début album, SEVEN – Organ Music of Singapore, featuring the solo works of up-and-coming Singaporean composers, was released by Centaur Records in April 2022. In November that same year, Phoon Yu performed alongside his co-composer Jonathan Shin with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony Chorus, the Singapore Symphony Youth Choir, and the Singapore Symphony Children’s Choir for the premiere of Illuminations – Symphony for Organ, Chorus, and Orchestra, which was commissioned for the 20th anniversary of the Esplanade. 

Phoon Yu’s performance career as an organist is supplemented by his composing and arranging ability. His compositions – for various solo instruments and chamber groups – have been performed and premiered across various venues in Singapore, China, Finland, and the U.S.. Aside from

Illuminations, notable premieres include his Straits in Sepia – Duets for 4 Hands and Feet for organ duet in Victoria Concert Hall in 2025 (commissioned by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra); his A Transi for the Common Man for acoustic guitar, ‘cello, erhu, guzheng, and pipa in the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (commissioned by the TENG Company) and his cantata for tenor and piano

Dream A Granted Sky, based on the poetry of Felix Cheong, both in 2024; and his Piece no. 5 for Organ and Trumpet, premiered in 2023 at Christ and St. Stephen’s Church in New York City. His arrangements have been performed by the Orchestra of the Music Makers, Spot Pocket Opera Theatre, The Opera People, Singapore Sounds, the SMU Symphonia, and the NUS Chinese Orchestra. His Three Organ Anthems were published and released by Muziksea, a Southeast Asian publisher specializing in choral music, in 2020. 

Phoon Yu was previously a C. V. Starr Doctoral Fellow at the Juilliard School, pursing his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance under the tutelage of Paul Jacobs. For his dissertation on Handel and Porpora’s settings of Siroe, re di Persia in connection to Jacobitism, Phoon Yu was awarded the Richard F. French Doctoral Prize. Previously, he did his Bachelors of Music in

music composition at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music under full scholarship, participating during his undergraduate studies in the partnership between the Conservatory and the Peabody Institute in their Joint Degree Programmed. He then did his Masters of Music in organ performance at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, being awarded the Bruce R. Eicher prize at the conclusion of his studies. His other teachers included Professor Donald Sutherland and Dr. Evelyn Lim for organ, and AssociateProfessor Ho Chee Kong and Dr. Oscar Bettison for composition. Phoon Yu is

currently the Parish Organist at All Saints Episcopal Church in Winter Park, FL.

 Aaron Patterson is a recent graduate of the Juilliard School, where he was a proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship and earned his Master’s Degree in organ performance under the tutelage of Paul Jacobs. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree as the Charles and Judith Freyer Annual Fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied organ performance with Alan Morrison. He also received a certificate in harpsichord performance with Leon Schelhase. Prior to this, Mr. Patterson studied organ with Dennis Elwell and piano with Dolly Krasnopolsky.

Mr. Patterson won first place at the 2017 Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition and the 2016 West Chester University International Organ Competition. He has also been a recipient of the Pogorzelski-Yankee Memorial Scholarship from the American Guild of Organists and the Bart Pitman Memorial Music Scholarship from the Delaware Valley Music Club.

Mr. Patterson loves collaboration and has performed with orchestras, violinists, flautists, choirs, and other keyboardists. His performance venues include the Wanamaker Grand Court, where he is an assistant organist, Boardwalk Hall, and the Kimmel Center. Mr. Patterson is director of music at Cresheim Valley Church in Philadelphia. He formerly served as assistant organist at Tenth Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia) and organ scholar at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church in Whitemarsh, PA.

A Christian and a native of Philadelphia, Mr. Patterson enjoys Bible study, reading, hiking, cooking, and following Major League Baseball.

John V. Sinclair enjoys a national reputation as a conductor of choral masterworks while locally being known as one of the hardest-working and in-demand artists of the Central Florida cultural community. In his 32nd season as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Bach Festival Society, he continues his imaginative programming, creative interpretations, and expressive conducting style. He has broadened the society’s musical offerings by integrating masterworks of other great classical and contemporary composers into the repertoire of the Society while perpetuating his reputation as a scholarly interpreter of J.S. Bach’s music. As a career educator, Sinclair keeps the Society’s educational focus vital by providing a broad range of musical programs and experiences for students of all ages.

Dr. Sinclair, known as a master teacher, is Director of Music at Rollins College and holds the John M. Tiedtke Endowed Chair. He has received many awards during his tenure, including the Sidney Algernon Sullivan Citizen Award, Arthur Vining Davis Fellowship, Hugh and Jeannette McKean Faculty Grant, William E. Barden Distinguished Teaching Award, Cornell Distinguished Service Award, McKean Award for Outstanding Teaching, and Lifetime Achievement Award, and he has twice been named the “Outstanding Music Educator of the Year” by United Arts of Central Florida. The Florida International Magazine selected him as one of the state’s “Power Players in the Arts,” and he is listed as one of Winter Park Magazine’s “Most Influential People in Winter Park.”

As a conductor who is equally adept at directing choral and orchestral music, Dr. Sinclair has been referred to as Central Florida’s “resident conductor.” In addition to Rollins College and the Bach Festival Society, he is conductor of the International Moravian Music Festivals and Orlando’s Messiah Choral Society, and he has to his credit nearly 900 performances of Epcot’s Candlelight Processional. He is also a frequent conductor for Berkshire Choral International and Orlando Ballet performances. Dr. Sinclair has made hundreds of appearances as conductor, clinician, and lecturer throughout the United States and around the world. The Bach Festival Choir and Orchestra have achieved international recognition under his leadership by touring in Europe, producing nationally released CDs, and performing with the London Symphony during their Florida residencies.

Dr. Sinclair holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music. His undergraduate school, William Jewell College, honored him with its most prestigious Citation for Achievement. In addition to editing and interpreting historical choral works, he authored an anecdotal book entitled Falling Off the Podium, and Other Life Lessons. The Wall Street Journal’s arts critic Terry Teachout wrote, “John is a gifted conductor, a great educator, and the best of all possible colleagues.” And for more than three decades, John Sinclair has shared his talent and dedication to musical excellence with the Central Florida community and beyond.