This has already been a fantastic convention but the Steering Committee of the 2019 AGO West Region Convention absolutely saved the best for last with the closing night performance by Paul Jacobs, one of the youngest department chairs appointed to the famed Juilliard School of Music and the only organist with a Grammy.

This is the fifth time I have heard Paul perform. The first time was in Los Angeles, at the 2004 AGO National Convention. The second time was at the 2005 National Conference of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians at St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City. I believe that was the first time I had seen the use of a large projection screen to show the organist as larger than life, especially since the organ console is hidden.

It was this performance that made me say to the Hawaii AGO Executive Board, “We just HAVE to bring Paul Jacobs to Hawaii!” and with a great leap of faith, we signed a contract. [My claim to fame was that Paul was my houseguest and I remember doing his laundry!]

I was confident that when people heard Paul play, they would just want to throw money! So many people poured into St. Andrew’s Cathedral that the ushers had to bring in dozens of extra chairs. But even that was not enough, and about fifty people had to stand. They just kept on coming!

And indeed they threw money, with the offering plates filled with $50 and $20 bills and $100 checks. That was 2006 and the beginning of our Annual Organ Concert series.

Two years later, we brought Paul Jacobs back to Hawaii, this time to play the 4-manual Aeolian-Skinner organ at Central Union Church. This time we counted over 770 people in the audience!

What I think is so remarkable about Paul’s playing is not only does he play long and difficult pieces from memory, with hundreds of stop changes, he projects such joy and delight when he plays, as though organ playing is the greatest pleasure on earth! (It is!)

Tonight the concert was held in the gorgeous Segerstrom Hall where I found Fred Merchant, a Hawai’i AGO member in the lobby. (He and I are the only ones who came from Hawaii, and we registered at different times.) Wonder of wonders, it turns out we were given seats right next to each other, smack dab in the center of the hall, absolutely the best seats in the house!

The concert opened with the “Fantasia” by John Weaver followed by the Bach-Vivaldi “Concerto in D minor,” a piece Jieun Kim Newland and I are playing on our January concert! All I can say about his performance is WOW! WOW!WOW! What made it so exciting were the rip roaring tempos and driving rhythms, leaving you on the edge of your seat.

He next played Mozart’s F minor Fantasy, K. 594, a fiendishly difficult work which he tossed off like it was child’s play. (I KNOW firsthand how difficult this piece is!)

It ended quietly so he had asked the audience to withhold applause so he could go right into Charles Ives “Variations on America.” This was a performance like I’ve never heard before—Paul stretched the phrases to the max, for maximum comic effect, with extremes of registration, causing the audience to laugh. Talk about fiendish— (I did attempt to perform this piece in 1976 for the Bicentennial), I’ve never heard the last variation with its tricky pedal part played so fast! I was breathless just listening to it.

The second half was Louis Vierne’s Sixth Symphony, a work Paul said he was performing for the first time in public—absolutely masterful! Of course, this was done all from memory, with a kajillion stop changes.

This being the last night of the convention, there was a reception in the Pavilion, and Fred and I extended our congratulations to Alicia Adams, Convention Chair, for a terrific convention with first-rate performances. (By the way, she wanted to convey her congratulations to Joey Fala, for bringing out the best in the Reuter organ at Garden Grove United Methodist: “That organ has NEVER sounded so good!”)

We hung around, hoping that Paul Jacobs would come to the reception so we could congratulate him in person. However, it was getting late, and since I had to get up at 4:45 am for the airport shuttle, I decided to go back to my room to finish packing.

Miracle of miracles, as we were about 100 feet from the exit, there was Paul!