From childhood lessons to formal education to a 30-plus-year career in churches, music has led Midwesterner Shelly Aebi to a life of of worship, service and song on Topsail Island.
Music has always been a big part of Shelly Aebi’s life.
“My earliest memory is my mother playing the piano and my dad singing ‘I Love My Rooster,’” she says. “Many of my relatives played guitars, fiddles and accordions, so there was music at every gathering.”
And everyone in her family took music lessons.
“At any given time you could hear piano, organ, drums, clarinet, cornet, guitar, banjo and mandolin throughout our house. It just depended on who was home,” she says.
Aebi is the organist at Topsail Presbyterian Church, where she plays the organ for two weekly services. She also plays for weddings and funerals, for which she chooses the music and crafts special liturgies.
Aebi’s journey to professional organist began when she took her first piano lesson at age 6 with her Aunt Betty, who held degrees in piano and organ.
“Aunt Betty taught me to play by ear, all major and minor keys and their primary triads,” Aebi says.
She studied with Betty until she was 13 and then progressed through two additional teachers before college. At 15 she started playing the organ in her church.
“I didn’t get paid, but I sure learned a lot,” she says.
In high school, Aebi played the clarinet in the symphonic ensemble and marching band and accompanied the school choirs. Deciding to major in piano performance in college was an easy decision. She attended Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, now Baldwin Wallace University, in Berea, Ohio, where she minored in education.
On top of course work and multiple ensemble practices, Aebi was required to practice a minimum of four hours a day. Fortunately, she says, “I always loved to practice.”
Aebi fell in love with choral music and sang in both a 24-voice acapella choir and a larger university choir. That love led her to obtain a master’s degree in choral conducting from the University of Minnesota.
When she was young, she had no real desire to play the organ.
“My mother loved the organ and wanted me to play,” she says. “I was less than enthusiastic, but took lessons at Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio.”
Aebi developed the skills to work in church, and although she originally planned on teaching, she found fulfillment in the art of music in worship.
“Man plans and God laughs,” she says.
For a time, Aebi sold Wurlitzer and Baldwin home organs and Allen church organs before moving to Minnesota. During her 32 years there, she worked for three large churches as music director, retiring from Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Edina, Minnesota, in 2021.
Reminiscing about family vacations in Nags Head, North Carolina, Aebi felt a desire to leave the frigid Midwest. A brother living in Raleigh, lured Aebi to Sneads Ferry.
“It is a wonderful place to live and close to Topsail Beach,” she says.
Scrolling through online job listings, Aebi found the opening at Topsail Presbyterian Church.
“I was so impressed with the smiling, welcoming, inclusive and singing people,” she says of her first visit.
Offered the job after just one interview, Aebi hesitated. After 30-plus years of spending holidays in church without family, she was not sure she wanted to make that commitment again. But the pastor was understanding.
“I am the only church organist I know of who gets Christmas off so that I can be with my Ohio family,” she says. “I am ever grateful for the pastor’s investment in my well-being.”
Also sealing the deal at Topsail Presbyterian were the superior instruments — a four-manual keyboard organ, a grand piano, three octaves of handbells and a set of hand chimes.
Aebi works closely with Dr. Rebecka Rose, Topsail Presbyterian Church’s director of music. Rose is responsible for conducting the adult, children’s and handbell choirs. Over the past year she has led the development of the church Music Scholars Program that connects music majors from Cape Fear Community College and UNC Wilmington with Topsail Presbyterian’s music ministry.
Like Aebi, Rose’s childhood home was filled with music from her parents and sister. Rose began studying the clarinet at age 5, adding oboe in fourth grade and bassoon in high school. Rose holds a bachelor’s degree in oboe performance at Pensacola Christian College and both master’s and doctorate degrees in music education from Liberty University.
Aebi and Rose make a prodigious liturgical team.
“We seek to provide everyone with an opportunity to serve the Lord through music,” Rose says.
Beyond Topsail Presbyterian, Aebi is a substitute organist and pianist at All Saints Catholic Church in Hampstead and has played for weddings and funerals at Infant of Prague Catholic Church in Jacksonville.
She is also a harpist, a skill she first explored in college. In 2000 she discovered a renewed interest in the harp as a student at Brooklyn Arts Music Academy in Wilmington. She plays her 100-year old classic Lyon and Healy harp with the Coastal Carolina Community Orchestra in Jacksonville and for the Southport Baptist Church’s Christmas cantata as well occasionally at Topsail Presbyterian. She is also a solo harpist for weddings, receptions and parties. And she teaches organ and piano to students ranging in age from 6 to adult.
Aebi recognizes the need to actively educate about the organ, an instrument that she feels is not yet a lost art.
“But we need to encourage listening to good organ performance and superb organ literature to rediscover the basic hymnody of the church and to give the organ pride of place in our liturgies,” she says. “There is no better feeling than when hearing a congregation singing full voice to a hymn and obviously enjoying it.”
Aebi says she is surprised by the places music has taken her in her life.
“I am amazed and grateful for this musical journey, and doubly amazed that at age 70, I am finding new ways to play and enjoy the gift that is music.”
