The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Episcopal
Chappaqua, New York
Who We Are
We invite you to stop by sometime and get to know us. Or feel free to contact us to learn more about our church.
The Rev. Alan Christopher Lee
Priest-in-Charge
Contact info:
Parish Office: 914-238-8751
Cell: 646-431-9298
email: clee@smtv.org
St. Mary's welcomes the Rev. Chris Lee, our new Priest-in-Charge as of October 2022.
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To learn more about our new priest, please click here.
Dr. Alexandra Beliakovich-Shkoda
Music Director
We are delighted that Dr. Alexandra Beliakovich-Shkoda has joined us at St. Mary's. Born and raised in Belarus, Alexandra lives in Yorktown Heights with her husband and three young daughters. She has been a church musician since 2011, most recently serving as organist and choir director at the United Methodist Church in Shrub Oak. She has an extensive professional background as a concert pianist and holds bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. She is also an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University, where she works with student choirs.
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The Search Committee could not have been more impressed with Alexandra's musicianship, but it was her winning personality that convinced us that she is uniquely qualified both to continue the tradition of musical excellence at St. Mary's and to lead us into the future.
She is very excited about her new job and is looking forward to making music with the choir at St. Mary,'s as well as anyone in the Parish who is willing to share his or her musical talents.
Please give her a warm St. Mary’s welcome!
Joanne Tiebout Douglas
Christian Education Director
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My name is Joanne Tiebout Douglas. As Christian Education Director, I teach Sunday School each week. Due to Covid-19, Sunday School will be organized as it was last year. A single class, pre-K through 8th grade, will meet in the Parish Hall, each family at one table, each table socially distant from the others and each with its own supplies. Participants are asked to wear masks.
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I am grateful to be called to this position. Some of you may know me as the mother of Ludovica Douglas. I recently moved to Pleasantville and am a communicant of St. Mary the Virgin. My Sunday School teaching experience is varied. In Boston I taught grade school students at St. Stephen's and later taught teens at the Church of the Advent. At the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston I began a one-class Sunday School, pre-K through high school.
Ms. Laurane Carnevale
Parish Administrator
Ms. Laurane Carnevale is a native New Yorker. She studied English literature at Hunter College, comparative literature at Harvard University, and drawing at The Art Student’s League. To merge her inter-disciplinary passions for the arts, she pursued a career designing multi-media presentations in the days when “multi media” meant live, theatrical productions for corporations and non-profit institutions. After designing several exhibits for the National Gallery of Art, in 1992 she was honored by Carter Brown, the departing director, to design his last gift to the American People, an exhibit of the Sculpture of the Golden Age of Greece.
While raising her son, Thomas Christian, Laurane volunteered at the Hastings-on-Hudson public schools, Hoff-Barthelson Music School, and was a founding member of the H-O-H Farmers Market. In 1998 she dispelled the Hastings Library Guild’s future-shock resistance to a video library by suggesting they feature Shakespeare, arguing that plays are meant to be seen, not read. The Hastings Library became the first in Westchester to carry the complete plays of William Shakespeare on video!
Laurane studied botanical illustration at the New York Botanical Garden and served as president of the Greater NY Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, organizing exhibits throughout the tri-state area. She taught drawing for Rivertowns Adult Education and gave private lessons in her studio.
In 2003 a life-altering event occurred: a fellow art student invited Laurane to sing with Westchester Choral Arts, where she was astonished to see Tim Vernon, with whom she was acquainted through mutual friends and regular attendance at Ars Antiqua concerts at SMTV. When she learned that Tim was SMTV’s music director, she began to attend services and found the homilies as compelling as the music was exquisite.
In Joel, St. Mary's former rector, Laurane discovered shared interests in early church history, philosophy, and the poetic and spiritual aspects of scripture that inform our daily lives. When Joel offered her the job as parish administrator in 2006 she seized the opportunity to work in a magnificent setting in the service of exceptional people, whose dedication to outreach and education has enriched her quest for beauty in all things.
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Priest-in-Charge: The Rev. Alan Christopher Lee
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Vestry Members:
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Wardens: John Priscantelli
Andrew Tustian
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David Aplin
Durrie Golding
Christian Hakim
Barbara Jackson
Rich Juzumas
Kelly Leonard O'Keefe
Janet Priscantelli
Rick Romeo
Sally Sobolewski
Parish Communications:
The Bell Newsletter Editors: Dana Wu & Catherine Fenlon, Mary Ann Bayer
Weekly Update: Laurane Carnevale
Webmaster: Christine Maxfield