History of Recording

Ron remembers seeing his mother play piano in their home on the farm in Northeast Nebraska.   Shortly thereafter his older sister, Rose, started taking piano lessons.   Even before he began the same type of lessons in third grade, he was creating pieces on the piano.   All of his eight brothers and three sisters, had the opportunity to take piano lessons.  HIs parents had the rule, if you practice you can continue taking lessons.   About half of them continued studying with a Benedictine nun, Sr. Hugonia Longen, OSB.   She was a member of the National Piano Teachers Guild and with it came a process of studying and memorizing from eight to ten classical pieces.  
 
Ron always practiced and his skills continued to be honed through the years in grade school and high school.   By seventh grade he was playing in a rock band which eventually became Rainbow Bridge.  By the time he left the band at the beginning of his senior year in high school, (he had his sights set on college study), he had been directing the parish choir and playing for weddings, funerals and the Sunday gatherings of his family’s parish, in Bow Valley, Nebraska.   
 
He began his formal musical studies at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. He completed a degree in Music Education in 1981 at the University of St. Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota.   He performed a senior organ recital at the mammoth St. Paul Cathedral.  Before graduating he also presented a senior vocal recital.   Rather than going into teaching, Ron entered the seminary at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota where he continued studying piano in the midst of his theological studies.  He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1985 for the Archdiocese of Omaha, in Nebraska.    
 
Through all the paths Ron’s life has taken him, music has always been one of the constants.  He shared recitals at every pastoral assignment of his 18 years of service in the Church.   He always believed that performing was a way of keeping motivated to practice.   And now in his later years says that the pressures that come with performance are manageable because he’s gained deeper acceptance of his abilities as they are and learned to relax while staying focused on the classical music that formed his repertoire.   
 
While serving as a priest in Beemer, Nebraska at Holy Cross Parish he met Dan Kan whom he realized he had sung with in the Nebraska State Choir in 1975.  Now some 20 years later Ron embarked on a recording career that has spanned the years since.   In 1997, he produced Venite Adoremus, The Wedding of Heaven and Earth, at Dan’s home studio.   It was a huge success for a first recording and he went on to produce two more recordings after its completion, Ora et Labora, in 1998.   And, Carpe Diem, to celebrate the Jubilee Year of 2000.  These formed the releases under the label of Trinity Productions.   
 
When feeling called to move beyond church work, Ron struggled to discern where and how he would live out the next stage of his life.   In June of 2003, he went to New York and lived with his musician artist brother, Pat.   During that six month period in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, he and Pat found an old piano for sale and moved it into their home.  It was there while collaborating with Pat, he wrote the texts and composed the music for, It Takes a Meltdown to Turn.   
 
Shortly after its completion he moved to Antigua, Guatemala where he continues to live at the time of this writing.   In those first couple of years in Guatemala he decided to study nursing and in 2007 graduated with a BSN in nursing and began working as a registered nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital in their oncology department.   During the six years of oncology work, he produced four CD’s in a series he called, “Healing Songs.”   During those years he released Healing Songs at Christmas, Piano Healing Songs at Christmas, Music for Meditation, and Bach and Nature.   All of these recordings were part of an effort to give music to the patients whom he served.   Some of them are memorialized on the recordings.   
 
Since those early days of playing piano on the farm his brothers and sisters started presenting a Christmas pageant of songs and presentations for their parents.   In 2013 he lead the effort to produce a recording called Home for the Holidays with family members that marked the 50th Anniversary of the pageant.   Even his mother sang on one of the traditional songs in an arrangement by his brother Pat.  

In 2019 Ron’s mother was diagnosed with a terminal cancer.   He suggested to her while in hospice that he compose the musical setting of the psalm for her funeral.  She readily agreed and he began the work on Psalm 27, The Lord is My Light and My Salvation, his mother’s favorite psalm.   In 2020, the lockdowns caused by the Covid Pandemic presented Ron with an opportunity to compose settings of the other nine psalms suggested in the lectionary for funerals in the Roman Rite.   He used the next two years to do those compositions.   As the pandemic began to lift he decided he would begin recording the psalms with Dan in Nebraska.   In the summer of 2023 he was able to complete his 10th recording,
+In Memoriam.   The recording is of the ten psalms and three intermezzos that mark this exceptional time in the history of the world.  A fourteenth piece which provides a fitting closure, Heart of Love, was written in honor of the work of Nursing Heart, Inc founded by Noecker.   
 
Since the time of the first recording produced by Noecker and his family and friends, compact discs have almost gone out of circulation.  Hence this website is being pulled together not only to record the history of music production by Ron Noecker but also to be a place where digital copies of all of these recordings can be found and downloaded if desired.   
 
Ron has decided at this moment of his life to eventually make all of these recordings available to those who desire them at no cost.   His only wish is that those downloading them might consider making a contribution to the on-going work of Nursing Heart, Asociación Corazón de Enfermeria in Guatemala.  The link to contribute is readily available at this website.