Sometime ago I came up with the idea that filling in for another organist was akin to cooking in someone else’s kitchen! You know what to do, you just don’t know where anything is, or how things work — like one of the most important things to figure out is how to turn the organ on!

This week I’m substituting for Jieun Kim Newland at Nuuanu Congregational Church and I bet it took me a full five minutes of looking all over the console before I found the key!

After I turned the key, though, I still didn’t get any sound. Luckily there was a Post-It note on the console referring to a switch in a closet behind the altar. Once I found it and turned it on, I was in business!

Whew! Now I could finally concentrate on setting up the stops for this coming Sunday’s service.

And … talk about being in someone else’s kitchen and feeling a tad uncomfortable (as I do when playing the harpsichord):

Today I also had my final rehearsal with Darel Stark on the duet for violin and harpsichord by CPE Bach for tomorrow night’s “Think Outside the Bach” concert.

There is an interesting article on this man, considered the greatest of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons, “Five Reasons Why CPE Bach Matters.”

He wrote the pianist’s Bible with his treatise on the true art of keyboard playing.

He was a keeper of his father’s legacy.

He was a man of the Enlightenment and hobnobbed with scientists, philosophers, poets and theologians.

He paved the way for Haydn and Mozart’s darker improvisatory moments: “He is the father, we are the children,” said Mozart of C.P.E.

He was a proto-Romantic with unexpected changes in key, dynamics and tempos.

All of that aside, I hope that when you hear our duet at tomorrow night’s concert, you will think as we do, it is a beautiful piece of music.