The following is reprinted from the current issue of In Tempo, the quarterly magazine of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians. I actually wrote the article months ago, but it was not published until now.

Fiasco!
The worst musical debacles and lessons learned

“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.” —Kurt Vonnegut

As an organist of more than fifty years, I have had my share of adventures playing countless church services, concerts, weddings and funerals, affording many laughs as well as tears along the way. My colleague, the late John McCreary of St. Andrew’s Cathedral, used to call me “Calamitous Kathy,” in reference to my numerous misadventures.

My first real disaster happened at a concert when I was a college freshman. My practice on the auditorium instrument went well, but until I walked out on stage, I had no idea where the console was going to be placed. To my horror, the spotlight shone directly on the back of my head, casting a huge shadow on the music rack which prevented me from seeing the music. In those days, no one memorized music, so you can imagine the catastrophe which ensued. I slinked off stage afterwards, with my tail between my legs!

Other times were not quite so disastrous. One Sunday I misread the hymn number in the bulletin and the pastor stopped me after the introduction, “Kathy, what hymn are you playing?” Another time I started to introduce the wrong hymn, during which my husband, the music director, came running up, hymnal in hand, opened to the correct number.  I was able to launch right into the correct first verse after the wrong introduction. Luckily both hymns were in the same key!

I’ll never forget the time I mistakenly gave the wrong pitch for the pastor’s intonation and had to transpose the Kyrie and all the subsequent responses instantly into C# minor on the spot!

Once I was in the middle of a choir concert which relied heavily upon a closed circuit TV system because the organ console was located to the side, behind the choir risers. All of a sudden the screen went blank, with the message: Video connection lost. Although I panicked because I could no longer see entrances or cutoffs, I kept playing. When I heard the choir stop singing, I threw my hands up as though I had touched a hot stove!

Or the time I played Saint-Saën’s “Organ Symphony” with the Honolulu Symphony—the second movement ends with the organ alone, and Maestro Samuel Wong told me he would hold the chord for a long time.

The problem is, he never gave me a cutoff, so I kept holding on interminably. Finally he dropped his hands, and I let go!

In the second performance he promised not to be so subtle and gave me a definite cutoff. But then he surprised me in the fourth movement when the organ enters on a very loud chord. During rehearsals he always gave a huge gesture for my entrance, but during the performance he merely crooked his index finger. I didn’t know what he meant until he did it again, and I thought I’d better play the chord. He surprised everyone, including me!

Until last year owing to the pandemic, organists here were kept busy by couples from Japan coming to Hawaii to be married in Christian wedding ceremonies. In the span of eleven years, I played over 6000 weddings, seven days a week, with a typical busy day having ten ceremonies, every hour on the hour. One fateful day I actually played 16 ceremonies when I was called at 5:20 am to cover for a sick organist. Luckily all the weddings were in churches within a four-mile radius, and his weddings were scheduled on the half hour, while the rest of mine were on the hour. No sooner had one wedding finished and pictures taken with the bridal party then I was on the road again to another church!

None of my stories, however, comes close to the experience my friend, John McCreary, had when President Ronald Reagan came to visit. Metal detectors were stationed at the Cathedral doors and the presence of the Secret Service put everyone on edge. During the sermon, John heard a rustling noise coming from the organ bench, then jumped backwards onto the pedals when he spied a large rat inside! To his dismay, some 32’ stops were drawn, creating a large noise, to which the Dean quipped, “The voice of God!”

All in a day’s work!

Katherine Crosier retired in 2012 after 35 years as the Organist of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and 20 years as Chapel Organist at Iolani School. She writes about many of her musical adventures in a blog, “Yet Another Year of Insanity,”www.insanityblog.online.