It’s been a week since I returned home from South America, and after a horrible week of trying to adjust back to this time zone (there’s a difference of 7 hours between Argentina and Hawaii), I’ve now jumped right in and immersed myself in the music for the next Early Music Hawaii concert, “William Byrd: A 400th Anniversary Celebration.” The concert will be Saturday, May 20th at 7:30 pm at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu.

From Wikipedia: William Byrd (c. 1540 – 4 July 1623), an English composer of late Renaissance music, was considered among the greatest composers of the Renaissance. He had a profound influence on composers both from his native England and on the continent. He is often coupled with John Dunstaple and Henry Purcell as England’s most important early music composers.

He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school), and consort music. Although he produced sacred music for Anglican services, sometime during the 1570s he became a Roman Catholic and wrote Catholic sacred music later in his life.

Truth be told, I have never played any of William Byrd’s solo organ music! Oh, the choir sang lots of his music — and I got to know the choral repertoire simply because I rehearsed with the choir and had to play parts when necessary.

But Byrd’s keyboard music ? I had played none of it.

The first thing to do was to find a piece to play; Ian Capps, president of Early Music Hawaii, suggested I play one of the Byrd Fantasies — and thanks to YouTube, I had my choice of performances to review. Of course, I had to pick one where I could find the score easily, which I found right away on IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project). What a difference making music is these days … in the past, you’d have to go to the university library to find scores for early music. Now you can find the scores on IMSLP and several performances on YouTube to hear other people’s interpretations.

The winner? I picked the Fantasy in C major. My usual method of trying to learn such a piece like this is the listen to the video with score in hand. I figure that by the time of the concert, I will have listened to YouTube videos at least 100 times! I put the various videos in a playlist and listen to them while doing my morning walk.

Here are two performances which I like: one on virginal and the other on organ.

The other person playing keyboard on this concert is Tyler Ramos on harpsichord.

Pianist and cellist Tyler Ramos holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance and Literature the Eastman School of Music where he was a student and assistant to Professor Natalya Antonova; he also completed a music theory minor and Arts Leadership Certificate. He completed his Master of Music at the Fred Fox School of Music at the University of Arizona where he studied with Dr. John Milbauer, and received his Bachelor of Music from the University of Hawai’i where he studied with Dr. Thomas Yee.

As a soloist, Tyler has performed concerti and solo recitals throughout the United States and Canada. He is interested in discovering both underplayed historical gems of underrepresented composers and exciting newly composed works of his peers and colleagues. Tyler integrates 18th- and 19th-century performance practices of improvisation in his performances after the model of Clara Wieck.

But the reason I know Tyler? He has been taking organ lessons with me since last November, and I can say with certainty that out of all my students over my 50-year teaching career, Tyler has picked up the organ the fastest! (I’m sure he would be embarrassed to read this!)

Dr. Alec Schumacker will be conducting 8 singers, and I’ll be accompanying 3 anthems on the program.

It is sure to be a great concert! Purchase tickets on the Early Music Hawaii website.