When I was taking organ lessons during high school, I was aware that my teacher, Dr. Norman Söreng Wright, commuted from his home in Montecito to Hollywood, CA where he was the organist and choirmaster of the Hollywood Methodist Church, a distance of 86 miles. He actually had an apartment in Hollywood, where he stayed on the weekends, and then drove home for the weekdays.

Today I started a new phase of my organ teaching, in that I am now commuting to Lihue, Kauai (107 miles away, on another Hawaiian island!), to teach Henry “Hank” Curtis, how to play the organ. You see, it’s his church, All Saints Episcopal, which is getting a new Rosales organ within a couple of months. The church is paying for my teaching time, as well as the airfare, the Uber rides on Kauai, and my parking fee at the Honolulu International Airport in order to insure that Hank knows how to play the organ after it is installed.

In our nearly two-hour session today, I found out that Hank and I went to the same school, the University of Southern California, although it was eight years apart! I completed my Bachelor of Music degree while he spent only his first two undergraduate years there as a music composition major before transferring to Mannes School of Music in New York City. Still, it was exciting to learn that we had some of the same teachers in music theory.

Although Hank is a newbie to the organ, he once purchased the complete organ works of J. S. Bach years ago, in the hopes of one day becoming an organist. Now’s his chance! I will plan to fly to Kauai about every two weeks to help him in his journey.

Today we had the organ lesson at Lihue United Church, which has a 27-year-old Rodgers hybrid instrument, and will continue to have lessons here until the Rosales organ is installed.

Probably Hank didn’t notice, but I was sending him a subliminal message by the T-shirt I chose to wear today. (In case you’re wondering, it’s available on Teespring.com). What was funny was when I stepped aboard my Hawaiian Airlines plane, the flight attendant took notice of it and immediately started reading the text. In the afternoon, when I flew back to Honolulu, I had the same flight attendant, who laughed and said, “Your T-Shirt!”