While Joey Fala spent the day practicing for this afternoon’s concert, I went exploring the Yale University campus and environs. Of course, I am completely awed by the wintry scenes in sharp contrast to our eternal summer weather in Honolulu.

I next found the Yale University Art Gallery and was most impressed by their collection. Believe me, I could have spent the entire day there, but had to be content with browsing for about three hours before I went to another graduate organ recital. Here is just a small sampling of some of the art they had there.

At 3:00 pm, I attended the recital by a first year graduate student, Mary Pan, at Christ Church where there is a relatively new Lively-Fulcher organ. Her program began with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in B minor, a piece which I’ve played since the 11th grade. She also played two movements from Pièces de Fantaisie, Deuxième Suite by Louis Vierne, several selections from Marcel Dupré’s Fifteen Pieces for Organ, Alexandre Guilmant’s March on a Theme by Handel, Thierry Escaich’s Poèmes pour Orgue, and ending with Max Reger’s Introduction and Passacaglia in D minor. She played very well and I especially enjoyed her grand rendition of the Reger.

I happened to talk with Thomas Murray from Yale at intermission, and he invited me to sit with him and Joey’s teacher, Martin Jean, for the second half of the program. You may remember that Tom played an amazing concert on the Walker organ at Kamehameha Schools and stayed with us on two separate occasions when we lived in Kaneohe. I’ll never forget turning pages for Tom at this concert and noticing how clean his music was — in spite of many stop changes, there was not a mark in his music to indicate all the changes!

Afterwards, Martin and I stopped at Starbucks and we compared notes on Joey’s progress since his entry into the Yale graduate program. It was just a few minutes before Joey’s program was going to start on the Beckerath organ at Dwight Hall. I’ll write about that in the next post.