— Organists and Organ Playing —

Over 6000+ weddings and still …

September 2, 2019

the July 26th wedding of Joey Fala to Sarah Jones will stand out in my memory. Yes, I have played the organ at over 6000 (!) weddings, but Joey’s wedding rates right up there at the top. Regular readers of my blog know all about my former organ student, Joey, whom I first met at Iolani School when he was in 5th grade, and his absolute obsession with playing the organ! In fact, the first post I wrote on him was called “The Boy Who Loved the Organ,” which you can click to reread.

And if you look at the tag cloud on the right hand column of the blog, you’ll see that Joey’s name is bigger than anyone else’s, meaning that I have written more posts about him than anyone else! Not too long ago, I asked Joey whether he had an artists’ website, and he said he just refers people to my blog: LOL!

Just yesterday, when I was at St. Christopher’s, I visited with Beth Barry, a former Iolani School teacher with whom I spent a few minutes after the service talking about Joey’s wedding.

Anyway, when I met JoAnn Condry in Norway a few weeks ago, one of her first questions was: “Show me your pictures of the wedding!” even though she has never met Joey in person. I guess people feel that they have gotten to know Joey well enough through this blog!

Sarah and Joey recently posted some of their wedding photos on Facebook and I’ll share them with you here. Photos are by Brian Mullins Photography.

Sarah enters the church with her father, The Rev. Gregory Jones
Sarah’s mother, The Rev. Susan Jones, gave the homily while her father administered the wedding vows. Shown is best man, Matthew Fala, Joey’s brother.

Certainly one of the highlights of the afternoon was when 2-year-old Clara Jones, Sarah’s niece, came up to the altar area (unprompted!) to be with her “Uncle Joe-Joe.”

Sarah’s family.
Joey’s family. They insisted that I be in the picture!
Clara with her grandparents.

Isn’t it wonderful to see people who are so happy?!

Here are the links to the posts I wrote about the wedding.

Susan Jones’ wonderful homily can be found here:

Joey’s stint as the Organ Scholar of Duke University has now been completed, but he will stay on to perform administrative duties for the Chapel, in addition to continuing as Organ Scholar at Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, NC.

Joey also has taken up duties playing the carillon of Duke University, on the retirement of Sam Hammond who played the Duke carillon for 53 years. When I mentioned this to several people, they were mystified as to what a carillon is. Here is an explanation from Wikipedia:

The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America GCNA defines a carillon as “a musical instrument consisting of at least two octaves of carillon bells arranged in chromatic series and played from a keyboard permitting control of expression through variation of touch. A carillon bell is a cast bronze cup-shaped bell whose partial tones are in such harmonious relationship to each other as to permit many such bells to be sounded together in varied chords with harmonious and concordant effect.” The GCNA defines a “traditional carillon” as one played from a carillon mechanical (not electrified) baton keyboard, and a “non-traditional carillon” as a musical instrument with bells, but played by automated mechanical or electro-mechanical means, or from an electrical or electronic keyboard.

And here is Joey, playing the Duke carillon:

(Sorry, you’ll need Facebook to open the link.)

Joey plays the Duke carillon.