Our first stop today was at the St Urban Zisterzienserkloster (Cistercian) Monastery Church which is a sight to behold from the time you approach the intricately-carved doorway. Open the door and your eyes are greeted with a massive kaleidoscope of white and gold —almost too much to take in. Can you imagine coming to church… Read More Organs galore!
… that’s how someone in our group described our first stop this morning at the Swiss Museum of the Organ, located in Roche about an hour from Lausanne and not far from the resort town of Montreux, where my husband and I visited a few years ago. The museum was begun forty years ago by… Read More A candy store for organists
The Abbey of St Peter and St Paul, Romainmôtier Today on the first day of the 2018 Historic Organ Study Tour we saw three organs in the village of Romainmôtier (called the most beautiful village in Switzerland!) and one in Moudon, but it was two “home” organs which made the biggest impression on me. The… Read More “Home” organs no more
I have returned home now, and no matter what my connections, that trip back to Hawaii is l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-n-g! (over 24 hours). The only thing I regret is that I left my jacket at Charles de Gaulle Paris airport security, and didn’t realize it until I started getting cold on the plane. By the time I… Read More Sights and sounds of Lorraine and environs
When I saw that the first two organs we were going to visit today had French pedalboards (“Pedalier à la française), I said aloud, “Uh oh, I’d better play something for manuals only!” and the person next to me said, “You are just going to have to bite the bullet and give it a try. You… Read More Bite the bullet!
Today was the first time we heard organs that were in tune and it happens to be the sixth day of the Historic Organ Study Tour! Now, I don’t want to disparage at all the fifteen organs we have heard to date, but let’s just say that they have been “charming,” “quaint” or “so French,” —just… Read More At last—organs in tune!
I’ve been waiting to play François Couperin’s “Tierce en taille” from the Messe pour les Paroisses, and finally got that opportunity when we visited the organ at Sarrebourg’s Église Saint-Barthélémy. Today is Day 5 of the Historical Organ Study Tour of Lorraine, France, and it was not until today that we have heard and played… Read More French Classic heaven
So I am a participant of the 2016 Historical Organ Study tour and we are a group of 39 people from mostly the United States, one from Ireland, and six people are from Australia. 19 of us are organists of widely varying abilities and the rest are listeners. This is rather different from the 1996 tour to… Read More All organs are not created equal!
A lot of people think that etiquette is passé, but here on the Organ Historical Society tour, it is alive and well. We are requested to wear our name badges at all times when we are with the group, in an effort to get to know one another and to easily enter the organ gallery… Read More Etiquette on tour
Let me see … I left home at 7:30 pm Friday night for a five-hour flight to San Francisco. Then I had a 9 (NINE!) hour layover before taking an 11 hour flight to Paris. Then I waited two hours at Charles de Gaulle airport for the train to Lorraine, and then a bus to… Read More 30 hours to Metz