Even though it’s been an absolute ton of work, I’m really enjoying playing the organ at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. Like this past weekend: I played three services there (Friday night Candlemas, Sunday morning Solemn High Mass and Sunday afternoon Vespers and Benediction), in addition to the 9 am service at Nuuanu Congregational Church, making four completely different liturgies.

It takes me at least 3-4 hours of prep time to pick all the organ music, photocopy and scan it all into my iPad, not to mention all the practice time needed to play all the music I’ve chosen, plus the actual time of the services and rehearsals. Each service has 19-22 pieces of music, including prelude, postlude, hymns, alternate harmonizations, liturgical music, propers, and choral music. I figure I drive to St. Mark’s five times a week, not only to practice the music but to register the organ (choose the stops). Much of the music I haven’t played in at least 10 years or is new to me.

Yet, the liturgy and the chants are so beautiful and comforting, especially after last week’s nightmare scam experience. The choir rehearsals are intense, but there is a lot of laughter emanating from the choir loft — I call it the “Happy Choir!”

And wasn’t it unbelievable that the parish changed the time of the service just to accommodate my schedule?! Before I took this job in mid-October, the service used to start at 10:30 am, making it hard for me to arrive on time from the 9:00 am service at Nuuanu. I wrote about it in my post, “You know you’re late!” It was the phone call from Father Paul Lillie last October that changed my life, when he told me he would change the service to 11:00 am, so theoretically I would have ample travel time to move from one church to the next, especially since the end of the Nuuanu service is unpredictable due to impromptu announcements which seemingly go on forever.

But— there were two things that bothered me at St. Mark’s. The first thing was that since the choir reads from iPads, every chorister reads from a Manhasset music stand. Depending on the piece of music sung, the choir members move their stands constantly as they change positions within the choir loft. The sound of those metal music stand legs against the ceramic tile floor was almost akin to fingernails scraping across a chalkboard— truly so annoying that I mentioned it to Father Paul in a staff meeting. I offered to sew “booties” for the stand legs, but realistically, I wouldn’t have the time, so Father Paul suggested buying socks to cover the metal! And the church would happily pay for them, since the obnoxious scraping sound was amplified downstairs in the nave.

So just after Christmas, this happened!

The second thing was that since the organ console is located in a “pit,” lower than the rest of the choir, and I’m relatively short, I had to look up over the music rack to watch the conductor, Mike Dupre. The plexiglass music rack didn’t help because with my organ music took up much of the area of the rack. Consequently, after every practice session, every rehearsal, and every service, I came home with a sore neck.

I had the same problem at Iolani School when I was the Chapel Organist there, and what we did was actually lower the music rack on the organ console. I asked that the same thing be done to the rack at St. Mark’s. Yesterday was the first time I used the lowered music rack, plus a platform was built for Mike, raising him up 6″ and making him easier to see.

In case you’re wondering, I only use my iPad for rehearsals but use hard-copy sheet music for the services. I’m still not confident in turning the pages on the iPad.