RODNEY GEHRKE (organ) is Director of Music and Liturgy at St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco, with its Taylor & Boody mechanical-action organ, as well as Organist and Choir Director at San Francisco's Temple Emanu-El. He is Professor of Organ at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and also teaches undergraduate organ students at the University of California, Berkeley. He is adjunct organist and lecturer in church music at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, Berkeley.

In 1985, in observance of the 300th birthday of J.S. Bach, Mr. Gehrke played the complete organ works of Bach in twelve concerts. He has performed and recorded with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra as continuo organist, and has also made two CDs of Mexican Baroque music with Chanticleer, with whom he toured the American Southwest and Mexico in 1998. He has also performed contemporary music with the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players and the San Francisco Conservatory's Blueprint Festival.

His teachers have included his father, Hugo Gehrke, David Dahl, Lawrence Moe, and Harald Vogel of the North German Organ Academy. He holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He has served two terms as Dean of the San Francisco Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and recently completed a two-year presidency of the American Organ Academy.