This week we are hosting organist, Nathan Laube, while he prepares for the Eighth Annual Organ Concert at Central Union Church, Sunday, March 10th at 4 pm. You may have seen the promotional postcard which shows Nathan at the American Cathedral in Paris where he is Artist-in-Residence. If you read the back of the postcard, though, it says that he is “currently working on his Master’s Degree at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, Germany.” If you were like me, you said to yourself, “Huh? How can he be two places at once?”

So I asked him about it when he arrived last night. “With the TGV (high speed rail) I can get to Stuttgart in three hours.” And so he commutes from Paris to Stuttgart and back on a weekly basis!

When Nathan first walked into our condo last night, he gravitated immediately to our fortepiano and played for about twenty minutes or so — all Mozart piano music which sounds lovely on the fortepiano. Of course, it’s not any of the repertoire he’s playing on Sunday’s concert. Carl joked with him, “Nathan, I didn’t know you were playing a fortepiano concert in Hawaii!”

Nathan talked about getting a pedal clavichord for when he moves back to Chicago, and knowing that he has been offered the position of Assistant Professor of Organ at Eastman School of Music (which is in Rochester, NY), I said “Huh? You’re going to live in Chicago and teach in New York? How is that possible?” So he said that indeed, he would be living in Chicago, but flying to New York on Mondays and Tuesdays to teach . . . and keeping his weekends free to play concerts . . . wherever.

Wow! What a life!

By the way, since Central Union Church is hosting a college choral festival (E Himeni Kakou) concert on Saturday night and Nathan’s organ recital is Sunday afternoon, the rehearsals for the choral festival are going to be at LCH while Nathan practices at Central Union.

That means they are going to stick 350 bodies in the nave at LCH! Good luck!

I took Nathan to LCH to try out the Beckerath …

Hope to see you at the organ concert on Sunday!