Tonight was the gala opening concert of the Organ Historical Society convention at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Springfield, MA, and the featured performer was Christopher Houlihan, who played for the American Guild of Organists Hawaii chapter a few years ago. He opened with a hymn, Lobe den Herrn (Praise to the Lord), and apparently the… Read More During intermission, you … Facebook?!
I’m now in Springfield, MA, the last leg of my journey, and I’m checked into the convention hotel designated for the Organ Historical Society. When I turned on CNN to see what news I’ve missed in the last three weeks, there was a clip of President Obama singing “Amazing Grace” as part of his eulogy to… Read More Organist to the rescue!
Deep in the heart of Mennonite and Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania is the Sight & Sound theatre where we saw an impressive production of “Joseph” — and the contrasts between the two cultures could not be more stark. There were three of us: I and my sister, Doris, and her singing partner, Sharon… Read More Christian Broadway
Who would have guessed that when my sister invited me to a Major League Baseball game last night that I would hear a REAL organist? After a delayed flight plus a layover of six hours in Boston, it took me 23 hours to get from Berlin, Germany to my sister Doris’ house in Fairfax,… Read More Take me out to the ball game!
On the 7+ hour flight on Lufthanza from Frankfurt to Boston, I flipped through the available entertainment channels and was pleasantly surprised to find a video of Bach’s St. John Passion performance by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Simon Rattle. What caught my eye in the opening credits was “staging by Peter Sellars,” and I… Read More Dramatic St. John Passion
The LutherLand tour returned to the U.S. while the three of us: my sister Margo and her husband, Ken, and I stayed in Berlin one more day. Because we didn’t want to pay 7 euros to enter Berlin Cathedral as tourists, we decided to attend the service inside, gaining us free admission. I whispered… Read More Berlin in one day–21,183 steps!
Today was our last full day of the tour, and we visited the large Martin Lutherhaus and Philipp Melanchthon museum where I was most interested in hearing about the family life of these two giants of the Reformation. Luther was 42 years old when he married Katharina von Bora, an escaped nun who had lived… Read More From the sleepy town of Wittenberg …
Even though we have been having a wonderful, carefree time in Germany, we are mindful of what has happened across the pond —the awful church shooting that happened in Charleston, South Carolina. The pastor who died was a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in the South, and one of our tour participants is a sorority sister of one… Read More Martin Luther’s town: Wittenberg
We are now settled in to our rooms at the Colleg Wittenberg, having visited Martin Luther’s birthplace and death place at Eisleben and Georg Frideric Handel’s birthplace, Halle. Unfortunately I lost today’s pictures when I lost my phone somewhere between the Francke Foundation museum in Halle and here in Wittenberg. There is a slight… Read More Eisleben and Halle
The weather has been absolutely spectacular here in Erfurt where we have spent the last three nights. We’ve come here because Martin Luther lived here as an Augustinian monk from 1505 to 1511. We walked here from our hotel, the Radisson Blu, to the old part of the city, and visited the monastery church with its… Read More Luther in Erfurt