The organ, be it either pipe or electronic, is quite possibly the most complex of any musical instrument. And so the odds that something might go wrong are always a possibility. In the post about Yuri McCoy’s wedding last week, I told you about the cipher in the trumpet stop for the recessional. That means… Read More Gotta Plan B?
My last post generated a lot of discussion about the whole notion of poor pay being the reason for the organist shortage, especially considering the amount of preparation time required to play a church service. I suppose if you go back to my ten years of private organ lessons, four years of college with courses… Read More How much prep?
The low numbers of students learning to play the organ has been a hot topic of discussion on the pipe organ LISTSERV to which I subscribe. Although I am more of a “lurker” rather than a contributor, I thought I’d weigh in on the discussion. It all started when the following statement was made: People… Read More Why there are no more organists
This afternoon Carl Crosier and I attended the wedding of Yuri McCoy and Asuka Okamoto at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, two musicians from opposite ends of the globe — he from West Virginia and she from Kobe, Japan. They met four years ago when they both attended the University of Hawaii to study piano. It was… Read More The union of musical minds
On Wednesday night, I and a few other folks from LCH attended the Spring Concert of St. Andrew’s Priory choirs conducted by our own Naomi Castro, with Carl Crosier, accompanist. Randy Castello (one of the LCH tenors) turned to me and said, “Did you see the obituary for Pat Chamberlain this week?” In the picture above,… Read More Aloha, Patricia Chamberlain (1926-2012)
This Sunday, the LCH Choir will be singing two anthems by McNeil Robinson, an acclaimed New York organist and improvisateur. We first met Neil when he came to Honolulu to dedicate the Beckerath organ at LCH in 1975. At that time I was fortunate to spend about 20 hours in organ study with him and… Read More McNeil Robinson, musician extraordinaire
This morning, the cartoon below was posted on the American Guild of Organists FaceBook page: It seems that having quiet for the organ prelude is a universal and never-ending challenge! Even back in 1949, Donald Kettring in Church Week, wrote: Recently I attended a panel discussion on church music in which a brilliant and accomplished… Read More The organ prelude (continued)
This Sunday, I will be playing selections from François Couperin’s (1668-1733) Mass for the Parishes (Messe des paroisses pour les fêtes solennelles), written when the composer was 21 years old. He had inherited the position of organist at St. Gervais at age 11 when his father died, but did not formally take the position until… Read More Couperin’s Mass for the Parishes
As the season winds down, there’s one more extra-curricular event for the LCH Choir — and that’s a Joint Evensong with our Episcopal colleagues at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sunday, May 6th at 5:30 pm. The heart of any Evensong service are the singing of two canticles: the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis. This week’s service… Read More Jesus College Evensong
Over the weekend, I received my April issue of The Diapason, an “international monthly devoted to the organ, the harpsichord, carillon, and church music.” I turned immediately to one of my favorite columns, written by John Bishop, and this month’s topic was “A matter of manners.” Mr. Bishop described a visit to a New York… Read More A quiet miracle