Whether this is the best place to post this inquiry, or whether it is worth posting at all, I’m not sure. Perhaps Jeffrey Tucker or some other Musica Sacra executive (I’ve contributed verbiage to your forum now and again) can advise and, if need be, edit – or entirely jettison – the following.

The situation’s this. Born in Australia (of which I’m a citizen) and resident here for most of my life (specifically in Melbourne since 2001), I’m a regular church organist whose non-organ income derives more and more from foreign sources. I’m wanting to spend, from 2013, much more time Stateside.

My biography César Franck: His Life and Times was issued by Scarecrow Press, Maryland, in January 2012. Since August 2011, I have been editor of the quarterly Organ Australia. Articles by me (mostly although by no means always on music-related topics) often appear in Journal of Musicological Research, Musicology Australia, Crisis, The American Conservative, The University Bookman, Modern Age Britain’s The Organ, and The [also British] Musical Times. I gave a Tournemire-related talk at the CMAA’s conference in February 2012 (Fort Lauderdale). Details of my published organ and choral compositions are at http://www.wirripang.com.au/authors/r-j-stove. I’ve been a Musicological Society of Australia member (2009- ), an Adjunct Research Associate at Monash University (2012- ), and an occasional lecturer in both capacities.

The above is all in addition to years of organ experience playing for Catholic Masses in both the OF and the EF. From 2005 to 2009 I was a regular organist with St. Aloysius’s Catholic Church (diocesan Tridentine Rite, not SSPX), Caulfield, Melbourne. I still play there sometimes. Also I’m a locum organist at other Melbourne parishes, and a periodic recitalist, mainly at St. Michael’s (Protestant) Church in central Melbourne. My forthcoming organ recital is on the 19th; four days later I’m to undertake my Associate organ exam (Australian Music Examinations Board) which will include the Bach Dorian Toccata and Fugue, Hindemith’s Third Sonata, and Reger’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor-Major. I’ve done a bit of choral conducting (in occasional lieu of the regular conductors) and can, all boasting aside, sight-read pretty well.

Unfortunately the sacred music job situation is going from bad to worse in Australia, a matter of demographics more than any other problem. I suspect America – blessed as it is with a gigantic, church-going, HHS-loathing, First-Amendment-loving, Second-Amendment-loving, and generally butt-kicking population – doesn't really perceive how hard it is for a church musician to get three square meals a day in the Atheist Republic of Oz. And as I say, I owe to overseas sources most of my non-performance earnings. (For example, the Out-There / Fuga Libera CD label in Belgium, which commissioned from me various booklet notes. See also the U.S. periodicals mentioned above.)

Based on the above, does Musica Sacra think that I would have a hope in Hades of a part-time organ post in the D.C. / Beltway region? That’s the region of the U.S.A. which I know best; my American friends live there; and because I lack the skill to drive a car, I’m dependent upon mass transit in a way that Mr. and Mrs. America are not.

Further résumé-style expatiation would be self-indulgent to the point of hoggishness. So I shall conclude simply by saying that I am 50 years old; have no ties but have entirely paid off my home mortgage; speak English; am free from a criminal record; have maintained my own non-employer private health insurance since 1989; and possess all my own teeth. My E-mail address can be easily obtained on the Internet, or I can give it here. I could request any requisite references.

Thank you very much. Apologies for the sheer length of this posting. And God bless.