HAPPY VALLEY, NC (March 31, 2017)…The Chapel of Rest invites the public to an Easter Eve service in Happy Valley on Saturday, April 15 at 4pm. The doors will open at 3:30pm, and all are welcome. Speaker will be Gordon A. Noble, recently retired pastor of Advent Christian Church in Boone. Musicians will be vocalist Bethany Wolfe and pianist Greg Knight, both of Morganton.
In the late 1950’s, the young Gordon Noble from West Virginia had recently earned a degree in architectural engineering from the Maryland Institute of Art when his father, an Advent Christian pastor, took him along to help lead an evangelistic youth camp. “I was planning to go into the Navy,” Noble said, but that youth camp experience changed his mind, and he promptly began to study at the Berkshire Christian College in Lenox, MA.
His first fulltime pastorate was in Dunbar, WV, and he came to Boone as Pastor of the Advent Christian Church in 1966, eventually creating one of the first college ministries in the country with ASU students.
Bethany Wolfe is a high school choral music educator in Lenoir, having grown successful choral programs at both the middle and high school level in her career. Her groups consistently receive superior ratings at state MPA, and her students regularly participate in All State Chorus and All County events. Bethany is also director of the Boys and Girls Choir of Lenoir and the Chancel Choir at Lenoir Presbyterian Church.
She received her musical instruction as a young singer in Charlotte, and earned her BM Music Education and BM Music Performance in Sacred Music degrees from Hayes School of Music at ASU in Boone.
Gregory Knight started playing the piano when he was four. At eleven he began studying at Lenoir- Rhyne College under Dr. Thelma Rast, with whom he continued until his graduation in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts in Piano Performance.
Gregory was selected as a finalist in the 2016 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, where he also won the Creative Programming Award. That same year, the City of Lenoir presented him with a Pinnacle Award for lifetime achievement in music, and in October he was invited by WDAV Radio to perform on Van Cliburn’s own piano. Greg plays regularly with Puddingstone and Caldwell Men’s Chorus locally, and was featured in 2014 on America Public Media’s “Performance Today.” He has also been broadcast on WDAV’s “Carolina Live” program.
For more information about the Easter Eve service, please call 828 / 758-0906.