It’s time again for the Annual Organ Concert of the Hawaii Chapter American Guild of Organists and this year’s artist is Yuri McCoy, no stranger to Hawaii. Yuri’s concert will be Sunday, February 25, 2018 at 2:00 pm at Central Union Church, 1660 South Beretania Street.

Yuri originally came to Honolulu to earn a graduate degree in piano performance and served as organ scholar of St. Andrewʻs Cathedral under Canon Director of Music John Renke. This concert marks his return to Hawaiʻi now as a rising star in organ performance. Currently a doctoral student at the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University in Houston, he is studying with organist Ken Cowan, who himself gave a memorable concert here at St. Andrew’s Cathedral a few years ago.

Moving from piano to organ Yuri has a vast repertoire of music for both instruments and specializes in music of the 20th and 21st centuries, especially the rarely heard masterworks. Do you remember the time he played Schoenberg’s “Variations on a Recitative,” not once, but TWICE in a row, with a short lecture on Schoenberg in between by Paul Hesselink?

Yuri was one of ten young competitors at the prestigious Longwood Gardens International Competition, June 18-22, 2013. There was a very nice “human interest” video of Yuri made at the time which I bet you’d enjoy watching—there is a short clip of his wedding at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in which Yuri himself played the processional! He says it went smoothly—and all he had to do was change out of his organ shoes! (Yes, I was there!)

Now Yuri is a father of a daughter. You can see by the photo below that she’s starting young!

He was featured recently on public radio’s With Heart and Voice on the January 7, 2018 program of sacred choral and organ music for Epiphany. Yuri is heard about 29 minutes into the program.

http://classical915.org/post/heart-and-voice-epiphany-2018

Yuri’s concert here will include some standard works of Bach, Buxtehude, Liszt and Vierne as well as lesser-known composers such as Karg-Elert, Elmore, Bonnet, Whitlock, and Dan Miller.

The concert is free, and donations are welcomed. More information can be obtained by calling 808-721-3468.