The main events of the Boston Early Music Festival are held at Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music, but the rest of the programs are held primarily in churches all over Boston. Each day, finding each church is a new challenge even though I can’t even count how many times I have been to Boston! More than a dozen, for sure!

Yes, I do have GPS on my phone, and believe me, I check my position every few steps, but I think my problem is that I can’t read a map! Also, there is the challenge of multiple exits in the Boston T subway system.

Today I will be spending nearly the entire day at the First Lutheran Church of Boston, home to the Richards, Fowkes & Co. Organ built in 2000. According to the program, “it is unassailably the preeminent organ in Boston for performing the organ oeuvre of J. S. Bach.”

The focus of this year’s mini-Festival is organ music from Italy and Germany during the time of Agostino Steffani, who composed Orlando, the opera I’ll see on Sunday.

The first organist, Luca Guglielmi, exploited the many colors of the organ through the music of Johann Jakob Froberger, who traveled from Vienna to study with Girolami Frescobaldi.

He also played music of Pasquini, Kerala. Tunder, and Buxtehude. What an utter pleasure it was to hear him play the “Fuga in. Major, BuxWV 137, the so-called Jig Fugue, a piece I have taught many times. He played it on 4′ flute stops, very fast, with lots of added ornaments and echo effects—all very cute!

He also used the Vogelsang, which effects the sound of a bird’s warble by combining an organ pipe with a small reservoir of water

The next performer was David Yearsley, who titled his concert, “Visions of Steffani at the Organ: Teachers, Colleagues, and Admirers.” He likened his program to traveling on the Autobahn in a BMW and revving the engine to its max, traveling through Italy and Germany, with a side trip to France.

He transcribed four movements from Steffani’s opera, Orlando, for the organ, and also played music by Kerll, Strungk, Lully, d’Anglebert, Böhm, Torri and Handel.

He really registered the organ to the max and I enjoyed his playing very much. My only complaint was that he didn’t hold the last chord very long and sometimes I didn’t know when the piece was over.

The last organist to play was Kimberly Marshall, professor of organ at Stanford, and teacher of David Yearsley, we heard just prior. She opened and closed the concert with the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat (“St. Anne”), used as bookends, as they are published in Bach’s Clavierübung. However the music in between was of course very different.

The pieces she chose for the rest of the program supposedly showed Italian influences in the music. We heard some of the earliest organ music ever written: from the Buxheimer Orgelbuch ca. 1455, and an English anonymous composer, ca. 1530 which I found delightful.

Other works were by Ferrabosco, Sweelinck, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude and Pasquini. The four sections of Buxtehude’s Passacaglia In D minor, supposedly represents the four phases of the moon, because there was a lunar clock in the Marienkirche in Lübeck where Buxtehude was organist.

My map took me to an entrance of the Arlington T station which was closed, so I had to ask somebody for directions.

Still, after I arrived at the station a man walked up to me and asked, “Are you from Honolulu?”

Turns out he recognized me from the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford and remembers talking to me! His name is Evan and he has been coming to Boston since 1985. I will see him again at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester!

Small world, isn’t it?!