I just heard from former organ student Joey Fala, and am super-proud to announce that he took second place in the Region I and II Regional Competition for Young Organists! Although he was a teeny bit disappointed that he didn’t place first, I think it is remarkable that he went up against students from Juilliard,… Read More Update on Joey Fala
We are home for just four days before we take off again for California and Indiana on Friday. I will be attending a convention for the American Guild of Organists (AGO) in Bakersfield, CA and the national biennial conference of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM) in Valparaiso, IN. We had just walked in… Read More Sneak preview
A few days ago, we held the annual meeting of the Hawaii Chapter American Guild of Organists (AGO) at our condo, and for various reasons, the attendance was about half of what it was a year ago. One of our members, Winfred Hancock, told me that he wasn’t able to come, but at age 93,… Read More Dwindling ranks
That is the message I texted to my former student, Joey Fala, when he directed me to the New York City chapter American Guild of Organists website where I saw this: Joey said that his local Eastern New York AGO chapter didn’t have enough applicants to hold a competition, but they were generous to give… Read More (Screams of delight!)
Extraordinary. That’s the only way I can describe this whirlwind weekend with 24-year-old concert organist, Nathan Laube, here in Hawaii on spring break from his studies at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, Germany. From the time we picked Nathan up from his flight from Boston, where he had just given a concert at Harvard Memorial Chapel,… Read More Extraordinary
wun·der·kind (vndr-knd, wn-) n. pl. wun·der·kin·der (-kndr) 1. A child prodigy. 2. A person of remarkable talent or ability who achieves great success or acclaim at an early age. [German : Wunder, wonder, prodigy (from Middle High German, from Old High German wuntar) A wunderkind is coming to Honolulu in the person of Nathan Laube, concert… Read More Wunderkind
What do you call a group of organists? Tonight we are hosting a potluck dinner for the local chapter of the American Guild of Organists (AGO) — and you might say that we are a herd of dinosaurs! (I didn’t know what you call a group of dinosaurs and had to look it up!) We are… Read More A herd of dinosaurs?