Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists was founded in 1967 and in 2022 will celebrate its 55th year of service to the fine art of the pipe organ, its performers, and the presenters of pipe organ recitals throughout the United States and Canada. From its inception, the agency focused its efforts in the representation of the most celebrated and revered American and European concert organists with an emphasis on the best young talent of the day. Fanfare magazine called Phillip Truckenbrod “America’s leading artist representative for concert organists”.
Phillip Truckenbrod, who founded the agency under the name “Arts Image”, originally planned to operate equally as a public relations firm for arts organizations (he began his career as an arts writer for the Newark, New Jersey Star Ledger, the country’s seventh-largest daily newspaper at the time) and an agency to represent performers. The latter simply took over. In the late 1970s, the business relocated to Hartford, CT under the name “Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists.” He operated it for its first 48 years, not only representing and organizing tours for American and European organists, but also vocal ensembles and chamber musicians and some of England’s most celebrated cathedral and university choirs. He retired in September 2015 from day-to-day agency operations but remains active as the agency’s consultant and in special agency projects. He was a board member until 2021 of the Albert Schweitzer International Organ Festival and Competition in Hartford, CT.
Charles Miller, who served as the agency’s Booking Director from 1993-2000, assumed ownership and leadership in September 2015, moving its office to Detroit, MI. He brings to the agency 40 years of experience as a church musician, concert series presenter, organ recitalist, choral conductor, administrator, and project manager. He has also been an active leader in the American Guild of Organists, having served as coordinator of the 2005 AGO regional convention in Hartford, CT, program chair of the 2010 national AGO Convention in Washington DC, and Dean of the District of Columbia chapter. In addition to his primary work with the agency, he serves as Director of Music and Organist of Cherry Hill Presbyterian Church in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, MI.
The agency’s artists and their work are seen monthly in America’s two professional journals for organists, The American Organist and The Diapason, as well as in England’s Choir & Organ, and other organ-related professional journals and AGO newsletters. Since 1971 the agency has been an exhibitor at national and regional conventions of The American Guild of Organists and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters.