M. Jason Abel, a native Texan, has been at Christ Church since the fall of 2005. He directs all five of the church’s choirs and serves as principal organist on Sundays.

Prior to Christ Church, Jason was Organist and Choirmaster at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Huntsville, Alabama. He received the Master of Sacred Music degree, cum laude, from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. His undergraduate degree, cum dignitate in musica, is from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. He has studied with Robert Delcamp, Larry Palmer, George Baker, and David R. Davidson.

While attending SMU, Jason served as organ scholar for the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation. In this position, Jason directed the Cherub Choir program and also assisted with regular service playing and conducting of one of the church’s three adult choirs. He accompanied the chancel choir on tour in the summer of 1998 as they sang a week in residence at Chichester Cathedral and at Westminster Abbey. He also accompanied the choir on two professional recordings.

More recently, Jason’s adult choir in Huntsville released a recording featuring several works by modern American composers, including some that were commissioned by Nativity.

In the past few years Jason has given organ recitals at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City, the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta, Trinity Church Copley Square in Boston, and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, California. He has conducted orchestral concerts featuring Duruflé’s Requiem, Mozart’s Missa Solemnis K. 337, C.H.H. Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens, the Second Organ Concerto of Josef Rheinberger, Handel’s Gloria and Zadok the Priest, and the Exsultate, jubilate by Mozart. He has taught choral conducting as an adjunct instructor for Oakwood College in Huntsville for three years and was twice on the faculty of the Sewanee Church Music Conference.

Jason is a member of the Royal School of Church Music in America, the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, and the American Choral Directors Association. He is especially fond of the music of Herbert Howells and is actively involved in the Herbert Howells Society of North America.