Joan Ishibashi and I took a direct train to Cambridge this morning where we had a joyful reunion with Ian McFarland and Ann Lillya, former Honolulu residents and parishioners of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. Ann played oboe in the Honolulu Symphony and Ian worked at Music Center of Honolulu. They moved to Aberdeen, Scotland from 1998 where Carl Crosier and I visited them in 1999. Ann came back to Honolulu briefly to play oboe d’amore for our St. Matthew Passion performances in 2000. So it has been almost 20 years since I have seen them and they haven’t changed a bit!

We spent some time catching up and reminiscing about Honolulu friends. After their Scotland years, they spent 10 years in Atlanta and two years ago, they moved back to the U.K. where Ian became a Fellow at Selwyn and Trinity Colleges at Cambridge University.

Ian played tour guide, explaining the history of the colleges and showing us the beautiful gardens.

What was most exciting was being able to play the Selwyn and Trinity College organs, thanks to Ian’s position in gaining admittance to the chapels and the organs. Of course I was a bit rusty, not having touched an organ keyboard in several weeks, but it was so much fun!

Joan caught just a fragment of me playing Bach’s Komm heiliger Geist.

The Trinity College organ was built by the Swiss firm of Metzler Söhne in 1976, and is a completely mechanical action organ. I was able to play for nearly an hour here and is definitely an organ I could play for hours on end!

Thanks to Ian for treating us to lunch in the Trinity College Hall, a building reminiscent of the great hall in Harry Potter!

This whole place was so incredibly beautiful that I took almost 100 pictures here!