Music

Dr. Vivian Hamilton conducts the Sanctuary Choir and is the primary planner for music in our worship services at First Baptist Greenville. An accomplished pianist as well as vocalist and conductor, Dr. Hamilton also conducts the Furman University Women’s Chorale and serves as a collaborative pianist on the music faculty of Furman University. Dr. Hamilton has been a singer in the Robert Shaw Institute Festival Singers where she had the opportunity to work with Robert Shaw and has studied conducting with Dan Lewis and Edvard Tchivzhel. She has worked with choirs at Simmons College, Emerson College, the University of South Carolina, Northeastern University and Clemson University. For twelve years, she conducted the Greater Anderson Musical Arts Consortium Chorale and is a former president of the South Carolina American Choral Directors Association. Her choral conducting experience also includes work at Baptist and Methodist churches in Massachusetts and South Carolina, and in the public schools of Boston and upstate South Carolina. She has worked as a collaborative pianist in Boston, Massachusetts, and throughout South Carolina. Since 2022, she has been part of “A Thriving in Ministry,” a group supported by a Lilly Endowment grant and sponsored by Polyphony (an organization of church musicians) and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. This is an intentional community of pastoral musicians from across the country working to build and sustain collegial relationships that seek shared learning, best practices, and enhanced thriving in ministry in the field of church music. She received her doctor of musical arts degree in choral conducting from the University of South Carolina, her masters degree in piano performance from New England Conservatory of Music, and her bachelors degree in music education from Furman University.

An active church musician throughout his career, Charles Tompkins returns to First Baptist as Organist in 2023, previously serving in the that role from 1997 to 2016. He has also served other churches in our area and as consultant for a number of outstanding organs, including Furman’s Hartness Organ, a 42-stop instrument by C.B. Fisk organ builders (Opus 121).

Charles Tompkins is recognized as one of America’s most outstanding organ teachers and concert organists. He is the Distinguished University Organist at Furman University, where he recently retired from full-time teaching. He continues to serve as Organ Accompanist for the Furman Singers and Chamber Choir and as Director of Furman’s Hartness Organ Recital Series.

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) and the University of Michigan, Tompkins is an active recitalist, performing at prestigious venues in both the United States and abroad every year. Recent international engagements have included recitals at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. He has performed at national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, the Music Teachers National Association, and the College Music Society. His performances have also been broadcast nationally on American Public Media’s PIPEDREAMS radio program.