Preston Dibble receives NPM award

BEACON PHOTO | RICH GIGLI

HISTORIC MOMENT  Preston Dibble, director of Diocesan Music and director of the Diocesan Choir, received the Member of the Year Award from the Director of Music Ministries Division of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians last month. Above, Dibble directs the music at the Mass for the re-dedication of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Paterson, on June 24.

CINCINNATI  Last month, Preston Dibble, director of Diocesan Music and director of the Diocesan Choir, hit another high note in his already impressive career as a minister of Catholic liturgical music. With joy and gratitude, he accepted the Member of the Year Award from the Director of Music Ministries Division of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, known as NPM, during the organization’s 40th annual national convention, held here in this Ohio city, from July 10 to 13.

About 2,000 musicians, liturgists and clergy from around the U.S. and beyond attended NPM’s convention, where Dibble received the Member of the Year Award. He has been extensively involved in NPM for more than 20 years. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops charters NPM, a professional organization for Catholic church musicians in the United States, which exists to foster the art of musical liturgy. Several other participants from the Diocese also attended the NPM convention.

Currently, Dibble sits on NPM’s National Council and recently was elected chairperson of NPM’s National Publications Committee, which plans to evaluate the effectiveness of its publications. He just concluded a four-year term as chairperson of the Interest Section for Organists, which advises programming for the national conventions, oversees certification programs and acts as a liaison with the American Guild of Organists. Also, Dibble serves as director of the NPM chapter for the Diocese.

“I was very honored to receive the Member of the Year Award,” said Dibble, who also has served as organist and music director at St. Teresa of Calcutta: Churches of Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Montclair, since 2005. The board of directors of the Director of the Music Ministries Division selected Dibble for the honor. “To have been recognized in this way by my peers at NPM was very humbling,” he said.

For Dibble, the award follows his reaching another recent “high note” in all his many years in music ministry: the acclaim that he received for the majestic and spirit-filled music that he selected and directed on June 24 for the historic rededication of the extensively renovated Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Paterson, presided over by Bishop Serratelli, the honoree told The Beacon.

Director of Diocesan Music since 2013, Dibble oversees the planning of the music for several annual diocesan liturgies, among them the Chrism Mass and Rite of Ordination of Priests. He also conducts the critically acclaimed 40-voice diocesan choir, which sings at many diocesan liturgies and presents an annual diocesan Christmas Concert, and serves as a musical resource for the priests and musicians of the Church of Paterson.

During the convention, Steve Petrunak, NPM’s president and CEO, and Anne Sinclair, former president of the Director of Music Ministries Division of NPM, presented Dibble with the accolade during an assembly. Sinclair said the division “supports our members in the continued growth and refinement of the skills, knowledge, and pastoral sensitivities needed as music directors in a parish setting.” Each year, it “honors a member who has exemplified, and brought to life in a parish setting, the highest ideals of leadership in music ministry,” Sinclair told the audience.

“It’s great that Preston got this recognition. He is a very humble, quiet servant of the Church,” Sinclair told The Beacon after the convention.

During the presentation, Sinclair related an answer that Dibble — a Catholic convert — once gave about the importance of music ministry and why he had devoted his life to it: “ I was greatly impacted by the music and I want to impact others as well.” In 2003, he was a Methodist, who served the Catholic community of St. Ferdinand Parish, in Cranberry Township, Pa., “when he felt called to come into full communion with the Catholic Church,” she said.

“With the true heart of a music minister, Preston led the music at the Easter Vigil for the beginning of the service, left the music area and went through the Rites of Initiation and was received into the Church. Then went back to the music area to lead the music for the rest of the Vigil,” Sinclair told the audience.

In addition to NPM, Dibble belongs to the American Guild of Organists. He serves as district convener for New Jersey and chairman of the National Committee on Marketing. He served as the former dean of the Metropolitan N. J. Chapter and Program and hotel chair of the guild’s regional convention in Morristown in 2011.

Meanwhile, at St. Teresa of Calcutta, Dibble conducts the chancel choir, a children’s choir program by grades, which includes a hand-bell ensemble and recorder-playing classes. Also, he manages the parish’s concert series, “Music at Immaculate.”

A native of northwestern Pennsylvania, Dibble earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pa., and a master’s degree in sacred music and organ from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh. He has performed in Heinz Chapel, University of Pittsburgh; St. Paul Cathedral, Pittsburgh; and the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Newark. Dibble performed with the Oratorio Society of New Jersey, and the Durufle Requiem with Schola Cantorum on Hudson.

Delighted about receiving the Member of the Year Award, Dibble called the organization that he has served for more than 20 years “an invaluable source of inspiration.”

“Through NPM, I get to talk with and get to know my colleagues, learn new ideas and skills and hear new liturgical music,” Dibble said.