Chances are, most people in the pew have not heard the name Wilbur Held (b. 1914) but if anyone has come to any services I’ve played, the odds are pretty good that he or she has heard his music. That’s because as a composer, he has written a ton of organ music which is used widely… Read More Wilbur Held, 100 years old
For the last few days, I’ve been working on the program for the Maui concert I’m doing at St. John’s, Kula on Saturday, March 22nd, at 6:30 pm. The concert will be dedicated to the memory of Dr. John Hanley, his wife Claire Frances “Cancy”, and son Paul Hanley. I was skimpy on some of… Read More Here today, gone to Maui
When I woke up this morning, my husband said to me, “I heard you talking in your sleep!” I told him I had just dreamt of playing a service on the Beckerath organ, except that the big problem was that I wasn’t sitting in the middle of the organ bench like I am supposed to–I… Read More Recurring nightmare
It’s the middle of May and our thoughts are turning to our summer travels. And although we’re not going to Germany this year, I did think about the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach was once organist. From 2002 there was a new organ there incorporating much of the previous 1858 instrument… Read More A Porsche in the organ
I received so many positive comments about my last post (concerning the story of my retirement in the newspaper) that I thought it only fair that I share Carol Langner’s original news release about Mark Wong. And today happens to be his birthday! Lutheran Church Announces New Organist Mark Wong has joined the staff of… Read More The unpublicized story
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw?rel=0] Perhaps you have heard or read about Bach and the subway experiment, but in case you haven’t, here is a version which is widely distributed by email: A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach… Read More The subway experiment
cipher, cypher [ˈsaɪfə] (Music / Instruments) A defect in an organ resulting in the continuous sounding of a pipe, the key of which has not been depressed Yikes! When I came to teach an organ lesson on the Beckerath both last week and this, we were plagued with ciphers on at least six different notes.… Read More Uh-oh: Organ ciphers!
I am on vacation in California, unfortunately recovering from food poisoning (not from Carl’s cooking!) and I got an email message from John Renke: Hi Kathy, What are those two little levers in the picture? John Ah, this is a gadget on the Beckerath organ that even long-time organists don’t know about! These are adjustable… Read More Adjustable tremulants
All along our 500 km journey, our host, Hans-Ulrich Erbslöh, kept phoning the office at St. Ludwig’s in Munich to see if we could see the organ there. Apparently it being Monday, it was both the pastor’s and the organist’s day off, but the secretary kept trying to reach them. By the time we reached… Read More St. Ludwig’s, Munich
There’s been a blog post about the organ that has been recently shared among those in the pipe organ community, and is well worth the lengthy read. I’m confident it would be interesting to readers of this blog so you can read the article in its entirety by clicking here. The author debunks the popular notion… Read More Bring back the organ