This photo which I posted on Facebook yesterday has already gotten over a hundred likes!

The Hawaii Chapter AGO will be presenting a Mini Organ Festival from March 12-21, 2022. Featured will be Alcée Chriss and Katelyn Emerson playing the Rosales Organ at All Saints Kapa’a and the Aeolian-Skinner Organ at Central Union Church. In addition, an all-Bach concert for organ and instruments will be presented at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu by organists Katherine Crosier and Jieun Kim Newland on the two Beckerath organs. Watch the Hawaii Chapter AGO website for more details (agohawaii.org).

• Alcee Chriss, All Saints Episcopal, Kapa’a, Kauai, 3/12, 6:00 pm
• Katelyn Emerson, Central Union Church, Honolulu, 3/13, 2:00 pm
• Sacred Choral Festival, Central Union Church, Honolulu, 3/18, 7:00 pm
• Katelyn Emerson, All Saints Episcopal, Kapa’a, Kauai, 3/19, 6:00 pm
• Alcee Chriss, Central Union Church, Honolulu, 3/20, 2:00 pm
• Katherine Crosier and Jieun Kim Newland, Lutheran Church of Honolulu, 3/21, 7:00 pm

We’re describing this as a “Mini Organ Festival,” but it is indeed a HUGE leap for our tiny chapter in terms of financial resources. Sure, our Hawaii chapter has hosted THREE regional conventions (1971, 1979, 1997), each miraculous in itself, but it’s been 24 YEARS since the one in 1997, and we’re all 24 years older, with less energy and more gray hairs!

Here’s how it all has happened:

Since 2006 with the concert by Juilliard organist, Paul Jacobs, the Hawaii Chapter has been able to sponsor one major organ recital per year. We didn’t know it at the time, but that one concert was greeted with so much enthusiasm and a HUGE crowd of over 700 people (!) that it has given us the financial resources to continue the concert series on an annual basis. Go back and read my post from last year, “Picking the winners,” on how this has become a series by Rising Stars, artists under 30, who have gone on to have stellar careers and made their mark in the organ world. Here’s a list of all of the other Annual Concert performers.

Last year, however, we invited Monica Czaus to play three organ recitals on three different islands, but just as the pandemic started hitting, her two neighbor island concerts were cancelled.

We had already scheduled Katelyn Emerson to play in the spring of 2021, but that concert was postponed to the fall of 2021. Then Hawaii Governor David Ige imposed a new restriction of no more than 10 people in an indoor setting which pretty much killed off an in-person event. If it had happened, nobody other than the Hawaii AGO Executive Board would have been able to hear Katelyn! So that meant that there would be no Annual Organ Concert in 2021.

However, since negotiations were already in the works to invite Alcee Chriss for 2022, it was suggested that he and Katelyn Emerson come to Hawaii in the same week, each playing a concert on the new Rosales organ in Kauai in addition to playing the 4-manual Aeolian-Skinner organ at Central Union Church. The Kauai concerts would be held on two successive Saturday nights, and the Central Union Church concerts would be held on two successive Sunday nights.

Then, we learned that Jace Saplan, the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Hawaii, was planning a choral festival to feature the organ in the spring. Could he plan to hold it that same week?

And while we’re at it, March 21st is Bach’s 337th birthday. How about an all-Bach concert at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu’s Beckerath organs. How about inviting former Hawaii AGO member, Jieun Kim Newland, who is now in El Paso, Texas, to come back and play another duet and organ plus+ concert with Katherine Crosier?

Voilá! A mini organ festival!

And … just to clear up something in the title of this post:

Mini Organ … Festival. ≠ Mini … Organ Festival (!)

This is not a festival of mini organs! If anyone can come up with a better title, you’re more than welcome to post suggestions in the comments.