It’s Memorial Day weekend and we are beginning the horrendous task of cleaning out Carl Crosier’s church office. You just cannot imagine the piles of paper that are the result of 38 years of music making and worship planning at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu! You know the saying, “A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind!” Apparently this quote is actually a misquote from Albert Einstein: “If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?

What’s kind of fun, though, is to find old programs we’ve done over the years. We actually have two full boxes of old programs at home, and it was from one of these boxes that Jean Lilley graciously helped to compile the list of Bach works that we inserted into the Bach B-Minor program.

One of the flyers we found just yesterday was from 1985, which was the 300th anniversary year of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) and Georg Frideric Handel (1685-1759). In those days concerts at LCH were under the sponsorship of a group called Ensemble Players Guild. That year we advertised 6 Saturday evening concerts which were as follows:

October 13 • Bach/Handel Choral Works. Carl conducted Bach’s double choir motet, “Komm, Jesu, komm” and Cantata 80, with Handel’s “Anthem for the Foundling Hospital.” Anyone else remember that Carl brought the choir in wrong on the final “Hallelujah Chorus?!” Luckily not too many people in the choir were watching him!

November 10 • Handel Sonatas with Jean Harling, flute, Pamela Smith, oboe, Cynthia Brown, violin, Chris French, cello and Beebe Freitas, harpsichord.

December 8 • A Baroque Christmas. A holiday concert featuring the Bach Chamber Choir soloists presenting arias and duets from Bach’s Advent and Christmas Cantatas, in addition to Christmas music by Heinrich Schütz including the “Deutsches Magnificat.”

January 5 • The Bach Solo Sonatas. Concert harpsichordist Larry Palmer from Southern Methodist University played solo sonatas and suites by Bach and Scarlatti. Peter Kun Frary, guitarist, performed the “Lute Suite No. 3” and LaVar Krantz played the “Sonata No. 1 in G minor” for unaccompanied violin.

February 16 • The Bach Organ Works. I played Bach’s Passacaglia, Trio Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Partita on Sei gegrüsset and the “Toccata and Fugue in F.” It was Stephen Crosier, though, who stole the show at this all-Bach memorized recital. He sat quietly throughout (quite a feat for a 2-year old) then surprised everyone including me when he toddled down the long aisle at the end of the concert to present me with roses.

March 16 • Music for  a Royal Occasion included Handel’s “Suite from the Water Music” and “Music for the Royal Fireworks,” “Birthday Ode for Queen Anne,” performed by the Bach Chamber Choir and the Hawaii Chamber Orchestra.

The flyer advertised a season ticket for all six concerts for only $23 !

Then at the end of the Bach/Handel birthday season, all six Brandenburg Concertos were performed at LCH in a series of three concerts: May 4, May 11 and May 18 at a price of only $13 for all three concerts. No wonder all those concerts were sold out!