A few people commented that the service I played last week on May 20, Ascension Day at St. Andrew’s Priory, actually occurred one week past the official date of Ascension Day in the rest of the world, which was May 13, 2021. To be honest, I hadn’t even given it a second thought. I’m presuming… Read More Time warp
Today is Ascension Day, also called The Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ, which falls on the 40th day after Easter and commemorates the ascension of Jesus into heaven. It is also the day that St. Andrew’s Priory School was founded on May 30, 1867, by Queen Emma, wife of King Kamehameha IV and… Read More Hail thee, festival day!
Today I had the opportunity to not only see but to play the new Rosales organ at All Saints Episcopal Church in Kapa’a, on the island of Kaua’i. I set my alarm for 5:00 am to get ready for my morning flight to “The Garden Island,” parked my car in the inter-island terminal and took… Read More A day on Kaua‘i
On May 17, 2001, a random act of violence took the life of a popular music professor on the campus of Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA. It was twenty years ago today that James “Jim” Holloway, aged 40, was tragically gunned down in a random act of violence on the Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA)… Read More Still sad, twenty years later
This afternoon I was very happy to hear that Adam Pajan opened the Inaugural Concert of the Rosales Organ (the Sloggett/Wilcox Ohana Organ) with Marcel Dupré’s Cortège et litanie, a piece I learned as a teenager with Dupré himself. Adam said that the piece was a great one to showcase the many colors of an… Read More Rosales puts Kaua‘i on the map!
This coming week I will be playing the first of several end-of-the-year events for St. Andrew’s Priory School, starting with Ascension Day, the school’s traditional Founders Day event. St. Andrew’s Priory School was founded on Ascension Day, May 30, 1867, by Queen Emma, wife of King Kamehameha IV, and Mother Priscilla Lydia Sellon of the… Read More Getting back to “normal” — almost!
If you asked the average man or woman in the street, what are the odds that they would know what a pipe organ is? Not likely, I would guess, and I can’t count the number of people who walked into the Lutheran Church of Honolulu and exclaimed to me, “That’s a really big PIANO!” (Uh,… Read More Pipe organs in the news!
From time to time, I have mentioned the name of my Swiss friend, Vreni Griffith. I first noticed her unusual name when I used to stick name labels on our music mailings for the Lutheran Church of Honolulu—that was probably in the early 90s. I later found out “Vreni” was a shortened version of “Varena”… Read More ¡Muchísimas gracias!
If she had not told me, tonight might never have happened. What I am talking about was the conversation I had with Cynthia Scheinert in 2003, former fifth grade home room teacher of Joey Fala, who told me about his fascination, no, his obsession with the organ so much that every school assignment, whether it… Read More A kid who had a dream …
Oh Carl! I don’t know how many times I said these two words over my lifetime—way more than several hundred, maybe even thousands of times. I said “Oh, Carl!” mostly in moments of exasperation, or resignation, but sometimes even in times of joy and elation. Or even to get his attention— “Oh, Carl, can you… Read More Oh, Carl!