Jack Rain
language & Diction
piano Accompanist
Email: jackrain@usf.edu
Jack Rain has worked at USF as staff accompanist since 1973, and has taught French, German, and Italian diction for singers at USF since 1995. He has performed with the University Singers, the USF Master Chorale, and the Florida Orchestra and has been featured on six recordings by church, choral, and university groups. He is a well-known Tampa Bay organ recitalist, accompanist, and foreign language diction coach.
Rain has been organist at St. Petersburg’s First Presbyterian Church since March of 1969 and has been responsible over the years for the enlargement of the 99-rank Reuter organ, now the largest pipe organ in the Tampa Bay area. He has given over 100 local organ recitals and three concerts at Ft. Lauderdale's Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. He was organist for the 1980 Vienna International Ecumenical Seminar. In 1981, he presented a recital on the 1735 tracker organ in Mexico City's Metropolitan Cathedral. He performed in the French Vesper service for the 1992 American Guild of Organists national convention in Atlanta.
Rain has worked extensively in musical theatre, collaborating as musical director and piano accompanist at St. Petersburg's Shorecrest Preparatory School. He also served as accompanist for the Spanish Little Theatre in Tampa. He is a member of the Tampa, Clearwater and St. Petersburg chapters of the American Guild of Organists, the National Cathedral Association, and the Organ Historical Society.
He earned his B.A. degree in Education from USF, with a Spanish major and French minor and attended summer courses at the universities of Madrid, Vienna, Montreal, and Guatemala. He studied piano with Rebekah Orr of Tampa, and organ with George Boyd, his predecessor at First Presbyterian Church, and Pierre Grandmaison at Notre-Dame Basilica in Montréal, Canada.