It’s only ONE WEEK AWAY from the onslaught of our “Celebrating the Pipe Organ in Hawaii” festival, and I have just finished updating the Hawaii Chapter American Guild of Organists website with the artist programs and bios. We’ll be having an Executive Board meeting tomorrow where we’ll be putting the finishing touches on all the arrangements. The festival runs from March 12-21, but my first houseguest arrives on March 7th, one week from today!

Specifically, it’s been my responsibility to:

• contract with the artists, through numerous personal emails or with their agents
• make arrangements for their housing. In the case of Katelyn Emerson and Jieun Kim Newland (with her husband), I’m playing homestay hostess and will be responsible for finding or giving them rides to the churches for practice. There’s only a three-hour window to change the sheets and clean the bathroom before one leaves and other one arrives!
• make arrangements for artist practice times at the various churches
• design posters and brochures to advertise the concerts
• compile artist programs and bios and post them on the AGO website
• solicit volunteers to pick up artists at the airport or take them back (there are 10 airport departures/arrivals!)
• solicit volunteers to take the artists to dinner
• transcribe several of the Bach works for two organs
• send out news releases to the various media outlets
• and lastly, but not least of all, PRACTICE the organ for the Bach program! This is the most important and unfortunately gets put on the back burner! Don’t worry, the music is well in my fingers now, and it’s only maintenance that’s needed.

Hey, I’m supposed to be retired!

People say I just put all these demands on myself, so hopefully I can persuade some other people to help. If you’d like to look over the various programs, you can go to www.agohawaii.org.

Meanwhile a good number of us with Lutheran Church of Honolulu connections had a brief respite last Friday night when we were invited to the home of harpsichordist Mark Russell for a house concert. I didn’t even have to drive anywhere because he lives in the same building and his unit is five floors directly below mine. What was exciting was that this was the first house concert I’ve been to since the pandemic, and even though there were 16 people there, everyone wore masks. Hawaii is the only state among the 50 that still has an indoor mask mandate.

The program was most unusual: all 20th c. music for the harpsichord, an instrument mostly associated with the baroque era. The styles ranged from mildly dissonant to raucous and atonal, and included “Sonata for Harpsichord (1991)” by Edwin McLean (b. 1951), “Overture to Orpheus” by Louis Andriessen (1939-2021), “Raga” by Penka Kouneva (b. 1967), “Ancient Cities” by Isaac Nagao (g. 1938), and “The Breakers Pound” by Dan Locklair (b. 1949). The decibel level got so high at one point that I whipped out the decibel meter on my iPhone and it registered an astounding and earsplitting 81 Hz! (THAT’S AS LOUD AS A VACUUM CLEANER!)

I found a recording on Spotify of one of my favorite pieces on the program, Nagao’s “Ancient Cities,” played by Calvert Johnson, whom you may recall visited Hawaii not too long ago and I had to dinner on January 30th (go back and read my post, “Got Bach?“). He was formerly the college roommate of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu webmaster, Bill Potter.

https://open.spotify.com/search/ancient%20cities%2C%20isaac%20nagao

Of course, besides the music and the company, the highlight of the evening were pupus by Rudy Riingen!