Yesterday I sent out an email on behalf of the Hawaii Chapter American Guild of Organists.

RIP Edward Kurtz

News has been received that former Hawaii AGO member, Edward Kurtz, passed peacefully in his sleep on Thursday, August 19, 2021 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. 

Edward had been in ill health. He had retired young due to a back injury that made it painful to sit on the organ bench. His disgust with the Bush presidency caused him to move to Thailand about 15 years ago.  He is survived by an older sister and younger brother that reside with their families in Pennsylvania.

He was thought to be age 64. He rarely played the organ, though he did ask at his mother’s memorial service to play and improvised on all the children’s songs she had played for years for the Sunday School children. His major in college was music theory and he had played church services for years. His contacts brought the Japanese weddings to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and he managed them to great advantage for the church…as well as making it possible for him to retire young.

In the heyday of Japanese weddings in Hawaii, Ed Kurtz probably played the most in a short period of time. Over the space of about three years, he scheduled 300 weddings per month (!) at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church where he was the organist. At that rate he was better paid than the Governor of the State of Hawaii or the University of Hawaii president!

But it was because of Ed that I personally set a record for most weddings in a single day. One early morning I took a call at 5:20 a.m. from Phyllis Haines, who sang Japanese weddings at St. Peter’s.

“Kathy, Ed is sick today. Can you play the weddings here?”

It turns out that there were NINE weddings scheduled that day, starting at 8:30 am, and occurring every hour subsequently until 4:30 pm. As it turns out I already had SEVEN weddings scheduled, starting at 9:00 am, and happening every hour thereafter. So, yes, it was possible to that I could play the weddings at St. Peter’s, given that the typical rehearsal, ceremony and picture-taking would take about half an hour. However my other weddings were in three different churches. Luckily all the churches were located within about a three-mile radius. Still each church had to wait for me to show up from the previous ceremony somewhere else. We started out the day on time but by the time of the last wedding, we were seriously behind schedule, all because of me having all the ceremonies at St. Peter’s.

In those days, the organist played four set pieces: The Hawaiian Wedding Song; a wedding processional, usually Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus;” a solo like “O Perfect Love,” “The Queen’s Prayer,” or Schubert’s “Ave Maria;” and a recessional like Jeremiah Clarke’s, “Prince of Denmark’s March.” Between all those pieces the organist had to play BGM (Background music) over which the prayers and vows were said. I tried never to repeat any background music over the course of one day.

I finally got smart and kept one set of music at St. Peter’s, and took my other set in my car. After playing 6000 weddings over the course of 11 years, I still hadn’t memorized “The Hawaiian Wedding Song!”

I was fortunately the recipient of the bulk of Ed’s organ music library when he made the decision to move to Thailand. It was at that time he gave me his brand-new Neue Bach Ausgabe editions of Bach’s organ music. Lucky me!

Thanks, Ed, for all you did for organists in Hawaii.