UPEI extends condolences on the passing of Dr. F. Alan Reesor, Professor Emeritus
The entire University of Prince Edward Island community is saddened to learn of the passing of UPEI Professor Emeritus, Dr. F. Alan Reesor on March 9 in Charlottetown. The flags in front of the Kelley Memorial Building have been lowered to half-mast in his memory.
Dr. Reesor was a long-time faculty member of the UPEI Music Department, joining the University as musicologist and organ professor in 1971. He began serving as the church organist and choir director at St. Peter’s Cathedral that same year.
At UPEI, he taught for 27 years, serving as chair of the music department for 19 years, before retiring in 1997. He was conferred the rank of professor emeritus at the 1998 convocation and continued teaching UPEI’s organ majors and participating in the department's Music Performance Competition Finals as a judge well past retirement.
Devoted to both his teaching and performance, Dr. Reesor was awarded an honorary doctorate in canon law from the University of King’s College in Halifax in 1981, was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Canadian College of Organists in 1997, and performed organ recitals in Ipswich and Bury St. Edmunds, England; Dijon, France; Port Perry, London, Oshawa, and Belleville, Ontario, and across the Maritimes. He was featured on national and regional CBC broadcasts on many occasions and played for the Earl of Wessex when he attended services at St. Peter’s Cathedral on visits to PEI. In 1991, Dr. Reesor released a compact disc, 19th- and 20th-century Canadian Organ Music performed on Historic Pipe Organs of Prince Edward Island, for which he received a PEI Heritage Award in 1993.
Donations in Dr. Reesor’s memory can be made to the UPEI Music Scholarship Fund. Online condolences may be made and his obituary viewed at https://macleanfh.ca/death-notices/obituaries/
UPEI sends its deepest condolences to Dr. Reesor’s family, friends, colleagues, and former students.
