It was only because of pressure exerted by my husband, Carl, that I decided I should probably have a speech ready for today’s celebration. And so here it is: I first want to thank all of you for coming today. Those of you who know me know that I would much rather be busy behind… Read More Not another boring musical bio
Today was the day that the Lutheran Church of Honolulu celebrated my 35 years as organist — and the most amazing thing was that the rain held off until AFTER the party was over! It was so nice to see so many familiar faces, friends, colleagues and even some people from the distant past. One… Read More It was Kathy Day!
When I came to the church yesterday to teach organ lessons, you can imagine my surprise and delight when I saw this: As you may recall from a previous post, “Cantate Domino,” the Lutheran Church of Honolulu is blessed with an amazing array of talented artists and musicians, and one of those is Carol Langner, whom… Read More A labor of love
Today a reminder email was sent to the parishioners of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu about the shindig to celebrate my 35 years as organist — a party on Sunday, April 14th from 12:00 to 2:30 pm. If you look closely, you’ll see that there was a reference to this blog: Another Year of Inanity! (sic) Same… Read More Don’t rain on our parade!
A couple of days ago, I got an email from Carole Arenson, the editor of the newsletter for Region 4 of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM), asking me to write an article for the next issue. One of the topics she suggested was “Advent/Xmas ideas — can be something which has worked in the… Read More Advent in April?
As some of you know, I will be one of the workshop presenters at the Region IX Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Bakersfield, CA, June 24-26, 2013. My topic will be “Teaching Little Fingers to Play the Organ,” and will address the special challenges of teaching children with no prior keyboard experience. On… Read More Performing in the golden years
My post about the passing of our colleague, John McCreary, has generated a lot of pageviews, remembrances and comments. For those of you who are not FaceBook users, you haven’t been able to smile at all the “Johnisms” that have been posted to the Memorial Page set up by Maestro Tim Carney. And it’s hard not… Read More Remembering John McCreary
After that last post about getting discombobulated over the page turns in Bach’s Great Eighteen Chorales, some people suggested that I just memorize the music. Dear People, do you know that it is going to take two concerts to play all of this music? That is because I think it would just be too much… Read More Memorization
I’ve been using two different editions to practice Bach’s Great Eighteen Chorales. Most of the pieces I learned years ago from the Widor-Schweitzer edition but for these last few months, I’ve practiced the music from the Bärenreiter score, which has the notes more spread out, resulting in a lot more page turns. But with my vision… Read More What’s in a page turn?
This morning our Iolani School Chaplain, the Rev. Daniel Leatherman (whose mom, by the way, studies organ with me) and I worked on configuring the school’s Virtual Organ which we use in the gymnasium for four All-School Chapels a year. It consists of two keyboards and a pedalboard and uses software called Hauptwerk on a… Read More The Virtual Organ and the Virtual Organist