Chances are, you probably haven’t heard of organist Carlos Curley, who died this past week. Tributes are pouring in from all over, and one included a video link in which Carlo explained how he became an organist. I think you’ll enjoy it.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1R9hKb5awA?rel=0]
Just a reminder, that there are scholarships available from the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists, which you may download by clicking here. If you know someone, an adult or a youth, who might be interested in studying the organ, please pass this information along.
By the way, thanks everyone for your moral and financial support for this program. Last Sunday’s Midsummer Night’s Organ Concert (a benefit for the scholarship programs) was a grand musical and financial success!
I was the music director at First UMC in Lake Wales, FL, in 1986, the year the church had installed what at the time was the second Frobenius organ in the US: a true tracker with 25 stops, that was built in Denmark, then deconstructed, shipped to the church, and reconstructed in the sanctuary by two organ installers who lived in the mother-in-law apartment behind my manse. Carlo Curley was heavily involved in the negotiations that the church had with the Frobenius people, even though at the time he was primarily performing on Allen electronic organs, and he not only played the organ at the opening service on May 18, but also performed a concert the same afternoon–even though the organ blowers, it turned out, took so much electric power that the only way the organ could be played was if both sanctuary air conditioner units were shut off, leading to a packed but very muggy concert. He did come back later for another concert; I left the church a year later when they downsized my position to part time, and that was when my college teaching career began. He was a boistrous man, a showman through and through, but he had the technique to match the image. I never saw him again for the last 26 years, but I will miss him. – Jim Massey