Paul J. Carroll
Organist - Pianist - Conductor
About
Musician Paul J. Carroll works as an organist, pianist, and conductor, and maintains an active career of worldwide projects. Since January 2023, Mr. Carroll has been the Director of Music Ministry at Corpus Christi Parish in Chatham, New Jersey. In addition, he teaches at Mother Seton Regional High School in Clark, NJ.
Mr. Carroll made his European solo debut in Italy in 2001 with Assisi Performing Arts and has performed over 100 concerts throughout the country over the last 20 years in sacred music, opera, and musical theater. He has returned to Italy each year broadening his responsibilities as organist, accompanist, coach, teacher, and conductor for the annual music festival. Mr. Carroll's recent musical highlights of Assisi Performing Arts include the opportunity to perform Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, to play Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, to conduct Verdi’s Otello from the piano, and to perform Gabriel Faure’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C-minor, Op. 15.
Beginning in 2013, Mr. Carroll created Organ Tour, a program of his company, Musical Collaborations. Organ Tour is a program for organists and pianists to study and play organs — historic and modern — throughout the world. For the first two years, the tours concentrated on the organs of Italy. Organ Tour Italia 2013, in collaboration with Assisi Performing Arts, featured a variety of instruments from the Lake Como region to Umbria and Rome. Organ Tour Italia 2014 concentrated solely on the organs of the north – in the region surrounding Lake Como. Organ Tour Italia 2015 took participants to Florence, Pisa, and Rome. Additional musical tours have included the Well-Tempered Clavier Seminar near Lake Como, Italy as well as Organ Tour Argentina 2017 and non-musical tours including the Pilgrimage to Poland 2018.
From 2013 until the beginning of 2023, Mr. Carroll was the Director of Music at St. Pius X Church in Montville, New Jersey where he worked with the Children's Choir, Adult Choir, and worked on a variety of parish projects including the 2019 organ project and a host of pandemic-era related activities including video editing and managing the parish YouTube channel. From 2007-2013, Mr. Carroll was the Director of Music at St. Louis – a parish of nearly 5000 families in the Archdiocese of Baltimore – during which time he was able to work with an abundance of singers and instrumentalists. The primary focus was to create and expand a united parish-wide music program through which Mr. Carroll facilitated the forming of the Children’s Choir, the growth and development of the high school Youth Band, and the frequent presence of instrumentalists from the parish at Mass. After his time as Director of Music at St. Louis, Mr. Carroll became the Artistic Director of the St. Louis Church Concert Series in Clarksville, Maryland where he had the opportunity to oversee and develop the growing series. During his time at St. Louis, Mr. Carroll has had the opportunity to direct the long-established St. Louis Choir in choral masterworks including the Christmas portion of Handel’s Messiah, Ottorino Respighi’s Lauda per la Natività del Signore, John Rutter’s Gloria, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Credo Mass, and Requiem. In addition he has had the opportunity to conduct the St. Louis Concert Orchestra in pieces including Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with clarinetist Noelle Presby, William Walton’s Crown Imperial March, and the Organ Symphony by Camille Saint-Saens with organist Tandy Edward Dix.
Mr. Carroll holds Master of Music and Bachelor of Music degrees in Organ from the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. Further study includes coursework in liturgy and sacred music at the Catholic University of America and biblical studies at Trinity College. His primary teachers have been Donald Sutherland, organ and Kathleen Pryor, piano. While a student at Peabody, Mr. Carroll was a piano accompanist for countless vocal and instrumental recitals as well as repertoire classes especially for the vocal studios of John Shirley-Quirk and Phyllis Bryn-Julson and the horn studio of Peter Landgren.
As an educator, he created the music program at the then newly created Shoshana S. Cardin School in Pikesville, Maryland, a relationship that continued until the school’s closure in June 2013. While at Cardin he developed cross-curricular projects between music and history as well as music and Judaism. In addition, Mr. Carroll developed an interactive, distance learning Music Theory and Technology course at the Cardin School that has led him to other projects utilizing new technology and distance learning. Beginning in 2014, Mr. Carroll and his wife, Alexandra Altonjy Carroll, developed the elementary and middle school music curriculum and instrumental music program for the St. Pius X School. This developed into multiple instrumental programs at schools in New Jersey. More information on the instrumental program is available on the Musical Collaborations website. Currently, Mr. Carroll teaches at Mother Seton Regional High School in Clark, NJ where he directs the Seton Ensemble and the annual school musical. From 2016-2023 Mr. Carroll was the pianist at Temple Shalom in Succasunna, NJ.
In 2010 Mr. Carroll created Singing in the Summer, an intensive week-long summer choral program for high school students in Maryland. Faculty members including Timothy Hsu, Larissa Sanders, and Andrew Shryock helped to develop the program with the inclusion of sessions ranging from music theory and history to technology and acoustics.
Mr. Carroll has been the director and music director for Sister Act, All Shook Up, Seussical, Beauty and the Beast and Newsies, and music director for productions including Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, 1776, The Fantasticks, The Wizard of Oz, and My Fair Lady; conductor for Guys and Dolls; and orchestral musician for Beauty and the Beast, Cats, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Damn Yankees, and Two Gentleman of Verona. Additional credits include directing shows for younger students including The Little Mermaid Jr., Annie Jr., Willy Wonka Jr., and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
In August 2013 Mr. Carroll began working with the Eastern Opera Company of New Jersey as he coached singers and accompanied performances of Verdi’s Otello. Then as music director with Eastern Opera, Mr. Carroll worked on productions of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus, Bizet’s Carmen, and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci for the 2013-2014 season. In addition, in January 2014 Mr. Carroll was the conductor for Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro with Stony Hill Players of Summit, New Jersey.
Mr. Carroll is the President of the New Jersey Chapter of the World Piano Teachers Association. He is a member of the American Guild of Organists, Music Teachers' National Association, and the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.