With all the recent news about the extreme winter weather over most of the United States, delivering heavy snowfall and icy conditions in places as far south as Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, we in Hawaii have to be grateful that we live in a place where our local weatherman calls it “the best weather on the planet.”

The New York Times stated: In all, roughly 150 million Americans were under some form of winter storm warning. Snow coated the sand on Gulf Coast beaches, and enough had fallen in El Paso for children to go sledding. [Hey, that’s where my friend Jieun Kim Newland moved!] It was colder in some parts of West Texas on Monday than it was in Anchorage, Alaska.

Oh, I lived in Princeton, New Jersey, for one year while I was in graduate school, and even though that year the winter was considered rather mild, we did have a few snowy days when temperatures went into the teens (Fahrenheit).

And when I visited former student Joey Fala when he was in graduate school at Yale, I went in the month of February. He let me practice on one of the practice organs but I didn’t know how to turn on the heat and nearly froze to death.

What I do remember from that those winters was that my hands got so cold—especially when practicing the organ, and I wondered whether I should try to find fingerless gloves. I remember that when my hands were freezing, my fingers just would not move fast enough for the demanding music. And oh! my feet would get cold, too. I surely did not feel like practicing, that’s for sure.

Organist friends in cold climates, let me know in the comments what you do in your situations when you can’t turn on the heat in your church to practice!

I found a blog by Rebekah Maxner, a Canadian composer, teacher and adjudicator who addresses this very problem, especially when churches are unwilling to turn on the heat during the week. So how are you supposed to practice in these conditions?

Rebekah wrote a blog post on this very subject: Cold church blues: practicing organ in the winter

1. Pre-heated hot water bottle — I carry my hot water bottle with me to the church, tucked inside my winter coat. While I practice pedals only, I keep my hands on the hot water bottle, nice and toasty and warm. Each time I switch to practicing a new hymn I practice pedals first, which gives my hands a chance to warm up until I add manuals.
2. Knitted fingerless practice gloves — My mother-in-law knit me gloves with holes for my fingers to stick through. These allow my fingers to play the keys, and even though the keys are cold, somehow my fingertips get warmer over time if my whole hand is warm. The gloves do impede my movement just a little, but I’m still able to practice effectively and there is no problem when I play later during the service without the gloves.
3. Making best of the heat — when I can, I practice in the hour-and-a-half before services while the church is heating up, and in the hours following the service (practicing the hymns and music for the next week’s service), while the church is still warm. Luckily my pastor chooses hymns early enough for me to practice ahead like this.

The closest I can relate to all of this is sometimes the air conditioning at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu is so frigid that I swear it’s like a meat locker in there, and you can almost see your breath! I’m kidding, of course—our problem is usually that it’s so hot, it can be miserable.

I rarely turn on the the AC when it’s just me practicing but I have an axiom that seems to be true of myself as well as my students: You simply can’t play well when you’re hot. I wonder whether the inverse is true: You surely don’t feel like playing when it’s so cold in the church that it’s freezing.

Hey, but if you’re in a place where the power has gone off, forget practicing the organ, unless your instrument can be pumped by hand.