Shayla Van Hal

Education: DM candidate, Indiana University; MM, University of Kansas; BA, Luther College

Shayla Van Hal is an organist and music theorist serving as a visiting instructor in music history for the 2024-2025 academic year. She will be teaching Music History I, Music History III, Theory IV, and overseeing senior projects for the year. Prof. Van Hal is currently a doctoral candidate in organ literature and performance at Indiana University in Bloomington. Prior to beginning her studies at IU, she served as a Visiting Instructor in Music and Interim College Organist at Luther for the fall semester in 2019.

During her master’s and doctoral work, Prof. Van Hal taught courses in church music, ear training, and music theory. Her primary musical research and interests are focused on the organ music of France and Eastern Europe. During her doctoral work, she has focused on the intersection of music, censorship, and religion in 20th-century Eastern Europe, particularly Poland. For her upcoming lecture-recital, Prof. Van Hal will be discussing and performing the Lenten and Passion Week organ works of Polish composer, Marian Sawa (1937-2005).

Prof. Van Hal is a member of the music honor society, Pi Kappa Lambda; the German honor society, Delta Phi Alpha; and the American Guild of Organists, serving in previous years as the Indianapolis chapter sub-dean and the Bloomington chapter dean. During her studies at Luther, she received an Imagine Fellowship and was awarded a Presser Scholarship for the 2015-2016 year. She has competed and performed in the United States, the Netherlands, Austria, and Russia.

As part of her doctoral work, Prof. Van Hal spent three months of residency in Poland, receiving fellowships through the Narodowa Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej (NAWA), the University of Warsaw, and the Robert F. Byrnes Russian and Eastern European Institute (REEI) at IU. Her studies focused on the Polish language at the Catholic University of Lublin; Marian Sawa’s manuscripts in the archives at the University of Warsaw; and studying Sawa’s organ works under the tutelage of Dr. Jan Bokszczanin, a former student and colleage of Marian Sawa. As an amateur scholar of Polish language and culture, Prof. Van Hal plans to continue research on topics related to sacred music in Poland.