Sunday, March 8 at 2:00 pm (that’s TOMORROW!) is Joy-Leilani Garbutt‘s recital at Central Union Church for the Hawaii Chapter American Guild of Organists. Bright and early yesterday morning, I picked Joy-Leilani and her husband, Zach Ullery, up from the airport where Joy-Leilani had just played a concert of music by women composers to an enthusiastic and appreciative audience at All Saints Episcopal Church in Kapa’a, Kaua’i.

I took them immediately (well as fast as we could maneuver through the heavy Honolulu rush hour traffic!) to the studio at Hawaii Public Radio where we had scheduled an interview with Gene Schiller. You can hear the interview here: https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/classical-music-conversations/2026-03-06/organist-dr-joy-leilani-garbutt-on-morning-cafe. Gene seemed unusually interested in the subject of women composers since he had done research in his early years at the station.

.After the interview, I drove Joy-Leilani and her husband to Central Union Church where I introduced them to Margaret Lloyd, the organist, while I took the couple’s luggage back to my apartment where they are staying through the weekend.

Last night, they returned home to my apartment where we were finally able to visit. Joy-Leilani spent a year in Paris on a Fulbright while Zach was the choral director of the American Cathedral of Paris, also known as The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity.. You remember, that I visited that church in 2018 and in rereading that post, I even mentioned the name Zachary Ullery who has just discovered this blog! Amazing! Our mutual friend, Nathan Laube, played the organ in the American Cathedral of Paris for three years, and you may remember I went to Nathan’s concert in Bourges during my visit. It was at the Cathedral that I made the acquaintance with the canon, Mary Haddad, who had spent some months in Maui at St. John’s Episcopal where Clayton Logue was the organist. Zach had indeed met Clay at a conference of the Association of Anglican Musicians in Boston! I told them Clay was my former student and had purchased my first small pipe organ which he has now moved to Wisconsin.

We also have many mutual friends, among them Jonathan Dimmock and George Emblom, in fact, Joy-Leilani and Zach just had dinner with Jonathan and George last week! All these connections make this a very small world, indeed!

We shared our experiences in Paris, and I told them about taking lessons at Marcel Dupré’s home in Meudon. Although they had not actually visited 40 Boulevard Anatole France (the address of Dupré’s home), they were familiar with the town of Meudon.

Here again is a video greeting by Joy-Leilani. Y’all come to her concert tomorrow!