Peggy Haas Howell is well known as an organ recitalist in many organ playing competitions in the United States and Europe. She has won top prizes in many organ playing competitions, including first prize in the National Young Artists Organ Playing Competition of the American Guild of Organists (1974) and a shared top prize in the St. Albans International Organ Interpretation Competition in England (1976). She has played recitals in Finland, England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United States. She has recorded for the BBC, For Sender Freies Berlin, for the Finnish Broadcasting Service, and for Raven Recording. Before moving to Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1996, Peggy Howell taught organ for ten years at The Peabody Institute Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University. She returned there to play a recital and teach a masterclass in the spring of 2009. In July, 2009, she was a featured recitalist at the Mid–Atlantic Regional Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Norfolk, Virginia. She has played several recitals here at Westminster Presbyterian Church in the past.

Ms. Howell is Organist and Choirmaster at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lynchburg. She graduated from Susquehanna University, magnum cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts in Church Music degree, and from Union Theological Seminary, New York City, with a Master of Sacred Music degree. She also attended the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Hamburg, Germany. Her organ teachers have included Harald Vogel, Cherry Rhodes, Heinz Wunderlich, Charles Dodsley Walker and James Boeringer.

Peggy Howell is also skilled as a choral conductor, and directs two children’s choirs: Cantate, The Children’s and Youth Choir of Central Virginia, and the Jefferson Youth Chorale. She was director of Chorale, the concert choir of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, 1996-2001. She is listed in Who’s Who in America. Ms. Howell is married to organ builder Richard Howell.