This past weekend I was on the Big Island of Hawai’i with the Kona Choral Society. In past years, I had complained that the audience clapped after every movement in the Handel Messiah, and I was wondering whether they would do the same this year. Lo and behold, I turned to this page in the… Read More They read the program! (mostly)
Tomorrow I’m off to Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii for the Kona Choral Society’s annual performance of Handel Messiah. This will be my fifth year in a row that I’ve been in Kona for this annual event and I’m honored to be asked back year after year. For the last two years, during the… Read More Upcoming weekend in Kona
To follow up on the post I wrote about musical prodigy Alma Deutscher, the person in the 60 Minutes segment was indeed my former student, Robert (Bob) Gjerdingen, who is now a music professor at Northwestern University. It was only a matter of hours that he responded to my post with the comment, “Dear Katherine,… Read More Organ connections
Perhaps you saw the recent 60 Minutes segment about Alma Deutscher, the 12-year old musical prodigy, who was just bursting with music in her head. Just this afternoon, I decided to take a break from folding 300 napkins for my condo’s upcoming Christmas party, and turned on my Apple TV. I’m used to watching 60 Minutes… Read More How can music be so beautiful?
If you read my last post, “The kids did it!” you know that over the weekend, my younger students gave a concert, after which they assembled a two rank pipe organ kit, called Orgelkids. If you read further back, when our local chapter of the American Guild of Organists was considering getting one of these… Read More The organ world is SO SMALL!
I am happy to report that yesterday’s Young Organist recital was a grand success in every possible way, and the students did themselves and their parents proud. Even one girl who repeatedly told me. “I quit the piano because I can’t play recitals—I always play BAAAAD and am going to mess up!” gave a fantastic performance, probably… Read More The kids did it!
If you hadn’t paid attention, you could have sworn you were at a Lutheran church tonight instead of being in St. Andrew’s Cathedral. As I overheard someone ask Karl Bachman, music director of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church whom I saw tonight at the concert, “Was that enough Luther for you, Karl?!” You see, tonight I attended… Read More Lutheran Night for UH Choirs
It’s concert week—the last week of organ lessons I give before my young students perform on Saturday, November 18 at 2:00 at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. For many of them, it’s the first time they have ever performed on organ in front of an audience. The youngest of these students is 9 years old, and… Read More Things I tell my students
BRAVA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT HIGHS, CJ!!!!!!! That was the comment on Facebook yesterday by Glenn Uejio, Constance Harding Uejio‘s husband, after her exquisite rendition of Handel’s “Concerto in B-flat for Harp and Strings,” op. 4 no. 6, with the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. Of course, I know the piece intimately, since I played a transcription of it in high… Read More Brava, Connie!
but thunder, lightning, and a driving rain could not keep a large and enthusiastic crowd away from last night’s “Music of Three Faiths” concert for Early Music Hawaii. In fact, as I was being picked up to go to the concert, my phone wailed with a civil defense siren, and I was thinking, OH NO,… Read More It was a dark and stormy night…