When I opened my email this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I’ve been invited to be a judge at an organ competition! It will be the AGO/Quimby Regional Competition for Young Organists for Region IX, which encompasses the states of Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah plus Korea, Singapore, Sydney and… Read More A first time for everything
Today was the day that the Lutheran Church of Honolulu celebrated my 35 years as organist — and the most amazing thing was that the rain held off until AFTER the party was over! It was so nice to see so many familiar faces, friends, colleagues and even some people from the distant past. One… Read More It was Kathy Day!
As some of you know, I will be one of the workshop presenters at the Region IX Convention of the American Guild of Organists in Bakersfield, CA, June 24-26, 2013. My topic will be “Teaching Little Fingers to Play the Organ,” and will address the special challenges of teaching children with no prior keyboard experience. On… Read More Performing in the golden years
So yesterday, I opened my email and found this message from the Lutheran Church of Honolulu: You may remember that when I announced that Christmas Day 2012 would be my last service, there was mention of a celebration party happening in January. Well — it’s going to be April 14th, and to be honest, it… Read More Time to party (finally!)
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!)
Over the weekend, there was an article published by the Kansas City Star which has been widely shared among organists: “Pipe organs soar, but number of players dips.” According to the article, the number of college organ students is shrinking, despite the number of new instrument installations. It cites the multi-million dollar University of Kansas organ… Read More Endangered species
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
One of the projects I’m currently working on is a presentation for the next regional convention of the American Guild of Organists, June 24-26 in Bakersfield, CA. If you want to check out their website, click here. One sentence on their home page gave me a ray of hope: There are many outstanding organs in our… Read More Is it over?
I heard Bach’s “Jesu, joy of man’s desiring” (from Cantata 147) as part of the wedding music on Sunday night’s premiere of Downton Abbey, Season 3, as did several others of you, and I wanted to share an amazing experience we had with this piece. It was in 1996, and a bunch of us Hawaii… Read More Jesu, joy of man’s desiring
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?