An international benefit organ concert is scheduled for Wednesday, February 11 at 4:30 p.m. at San Andrés Church on Calle Marcos Castellanos in Ajijic. Neal Biggers will perform the same program of music in Ajijic as he recently presented at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Henderson, Kentucky. Biggers has been organist in many churches and has been director of liturgical and musical ministries at Holy Name for more than 12 years.
Biggers studied organ at universities in North Carolina and Indiana, is a regular performer and leader in the Evansville Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and received that group’s National Colleague Certification. He has performed on organs in Ireland, Germany and Poland. His program for the twin concerts in Henderson and Ajijic includes music from around the world and features pieces by Pachelbel, Bach, Haydn, Shubert, Messiaen, Widor and Nexucab composers José Jesús Estrada and Ramón Noble. 
Also performing in the concert which will benefit La Villa Infantil, the orphanage located southeast of Jocotepec are Ajijic residents Juan Navarro, who will sing “Ave Maria” and mezzo-soprano Patteye Simpson. Simpson is well known from her various singing and acting performances and for the music she has coordinated for theatrical and musical productions.
Biggers and the energetically socially active Henderson congregation learned about Ajijic and about the orphanage when lakeside residents Joe and Jenny Smith visited Indiana and Kentucky during a recent holiday visit. Joe Smith is a choir member and cantor at San Andrés and Jenny Smith a volunteer and board member of Villa Infantil de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and San José. It was an easy segue for Biggers to agree to visit Lake Chapala and perform the same concert he presented in Henderson in early December in order to raise money to help the 30 children living at Villa Infantil.
Biggers will play the Allen digital pipe organ at San Andrés. This fine instrument is the same model as is installed in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican in Rome. There will be no tickets or admission fee for the February concert. Instead, those attending are asked to bring non-perishable foods and to participate generously in the free-will offering.