This coming week I will be playing the first of several end-of-the-year events for St. Andrew’s Priory School, starting with Ascension Day, the school’s traditional Founders Day event. St. Andrew’s Priory School was founded on Ascension Day, May 30, 1867, by Queen Emma, wife of King Kamehameha IV, and Mother Priscilla Lydia Sellon of the Society of the Most Holy Trinity of Devonport, England.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the Ascension Day Service:
Each year, the Priory commemorates the school’s founding with a service in St. Andrew’s Cathedral, followed by the Coral Cross Ceremony at the school’s historic 9-foot coral cross in the Robinson Courtyard, which is decorated by the junior class on Ascension Eve as a gift to the school in honor of the founders. The junior class traditionally stays overnight at the school to decorate the cross with flowers and lei, according to the theme chosen by the class.

I wrote about the Ascension Day service in May 2017, “How loud is loud?” when the decibel level in the Cathedral was so high that I was playing FULL ORGAN and I couldn’t even hear myself play! And the Aeolian-Skinner organ is no slouch when it comes to LOUD and all the stops drawn!

Next week will be the first time I’ve played the Aeolian-Skinner organ since last July, when a delayed baccalaureate and graduation was held in St. Andrew’s Cathedral. I wrote about Baccalaureate in a post called “Virtual Baccalaureate” — and the shocking thing about it all was that I wore a T-shirt and shorts! (No one saw me!)

And beginning June 6, 2021, Nuuanu Congregational Church will again resume in-person services, although there will be no singing. I will play the hymns as usual, but the people in the pews will “meditate” on the words which will be projected on the wall. This will be the first Sunday service I will play at the church since the first Sunday in August! I went to the church the other day to try out the instrument, and only momentarily panicked when I couldn’t hear any sounds — someone had turned the breaker off!

Next week, I will travel to the island of Kaua’i, to give an organ lesson to Hank Curtis, the music director of All Saints Episcopal Church. You may remember that during the fall of 2019 I made bi-weekly airplane rides to Kaua’i to teach him how to play the organ, but all that had to stop during the pandemic. As of May 11th, however, fully-vaccinated Hawaii residents may travel inter-island without having to take a Covid test to bypass quarantine.

I posted more pictures of the instrument at “Pipe organs in the news.“

This coming Sunday, there will be a livestream of the organ dedication recital at All Saints—the new instrument by Rosales which is finally coming to fruition! The concert played by Adam Pajan will be livestreamed from the church’s website homepage at 2pm Hawaii Standard Time, May 16, 2021. AllSaintsKauai.org. The program will feature works by Dupré, Callahan, Howells, Bach, Peeters, Gershwin, and Widor.

Read the Garden Island newspaper article here. There was even a national story about the organ in The Episcopal Cafe.

You can hear an extensive interview about the organ with David Brown, retired Senior Warden of All Saints on Hawaii Public Radio (You need to scroll down quite a bit to get to the article and sound file about the organ and interview)

Shane Morris Wise, who is a parishioner and served as organ consultant, shared his initial reactions to the instrument with me: I can’t wait for you to experience the organ! It’s thrilling! It turned out to be a very fine instrument. The ensembles are strong and cohesive. The reeds are fiery and also smooth and very interesting.

As for things getting back to normal, I bet everyone was excited to hear President Biden’s announcement yesterday about vaccinated people being free to go without masks in both indoor and outdoor situations. However, not so in Hawaii — I woke up this morning to read the headlines in our local newspaper: HAWAII MASK RULES UNCHANGED.

Life will almost be back to normal soon!