I was pleasantly surprised to open today’s Star-Advertiser newspaper to find a gigantic interview with Sophia Stark, this year’s winner of the Miss Hawaii Volunteer Teen. I am going to repost the article here, and add that Sophia and her brother Raphael, have studied organ with me for four years but have had to take… Read More My organ student!
On Easter Day in the middle of carrying food and decorations down to the 8th floor recreation deck for my Easter brunch, I received a phone call in the elevator. It was Kathy Hallman, daughter of organist Nyle Hallman, who said to me, “Kathy, you’re probably in the middle of Easter cooking, but Mom and… Read More Perfect pitch not needed
In another move to normalcy, this week I’m hosting Jason Anderson and Sal Salinas as houseguests. You’ll recall that Jason is the second director of the Compline Choir in Seattle, succeeding Peter Hallock in 2009, our former business partner in our music publishing business, Ionian Arts. Jason wrote his doctoral dissertation on “The Life and… Read More Post-Easter houseguests
Yesterday’s text message from organist Dan Werning, now living in Bangkok, Thailand, introduced us to Okey Okafor, Nigerian organist at Christ Church. I was so fascinated by Okey’s story that Dan encouraged me to write to him! My musical journey started started when I was a kid. My father was an organist in a church… Read More Easter in Bangkok
Maybe you saw the recent article about dropping church membership: “U.S. Church Membership Down Sharply in Past Two Decades.” The study revealed that half of Americans are church members, down from 70% in 1999. Most of the decline is attributable to increase in percentage with no religion and membership has fallen nine points among those… Read More Grateful, but …
Apparently a number of my friends were unaware that our mutual friend, Preston Larson, died last December of Covid. The post I wrote, “RIP Preston Larson 1942-2020” somehow got overlooked in the busy Advent/Christmas season. So if you’d like to read his obituary, you can click the link. I guess I must have been pretty… Read More A really good friend
The following post in the Facebook Organists Association page elicited many responses: Anthony Williams wrote: I have a question for the church musicians. Are you using brass for Easter? Usually, we have a brass quartet, however, with the pandemic we are deciding tonight whether or not to use brass. Any thoughts or suggestions would be… Read More Brass on Easter?
Even though Easter is not until April 4, this morning I recorded the music for Easter—trumpeter Russell Ishida and I are joining forces to perform John Stanley’s Trumpet Voluntary, three verses of EASTER HYMN with a descant on the last verse by Dale Wood, and a trumpet and organ arrangement of Rigaudon by Andre Campra.… Read More Early Easter?!
From time to time I have written about the pipe organ project at All Saints Episcopal Church in Kapa’a, Kaua’i. Check out my post, “Good news for a change!” for photos of the instrument in huge crates. The instrument actually arrived on the island in October 2020, and because of the pandemic, there have been… Read More A pipe organ for Kaua’i
I guess you could call me a morning person. This morning I woke up about 4:00 am, read all my emails and practiced my Spanish, then I decided to drive to the church and play the organ. As you may recall, usually every Friday I record all the music for the Sunday in the week… Read More Like the old days