“Free at last! Thank God I’m free at last!” After six weeks of having a splint on my fractured wrist, I’m able to get back to normal and resume playing the organ. You won’t believe how much I’ve missed playing! I had the time, and the inclination, but when I tried to play with the… Read More I’m Bach! (YAY!)
In yesterday’s post, I described only the daytime of my first day of “retirement” — I didn’t tell you about my activity last night when I spent several hours creating a “playbook” for this weekend’s services at St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Back in the days when I was the organist at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu,… Read More The playbook
Yesterday we were in Tacoma, WA, and took in an all-Bach organ recital at Christ Episcopal Church, where we heard Tomoko Miyamoto from Ferris University in Yokohama, Japan, play selections from Bach’s Clavierübung III, the German organ mass. The tracker organ is by John Brombaugh and is in a lovely acoustic. We found out about the concert through… Read More Bach in Tacoma
While I am off practicing, my local consultant felt compelled to write in my absence. Although I have been quoted in several of Kathy’s blog posts, this will be the first time I have actually written one myself. For the regular readers of this blog, you probably have already surmised that the upcoming Bach recitals… Read More A labor of love
This week I’m back at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church to play their High Mass, and if I do say so myself, everything went fine last Sunday except for one teeny-tiny glitch in the Gospel Acclamation. The assembly sang “Laudate dominum” by Jacques Berthier from Taizé which had a first and second ending. (You might be… Read More Don’t mind if I do!
St. Theresa . . . St. Christopher . . . St. Clement . . . St. Andrew. No, I’m not reciting a random list of saints — this is the list of churches for which I have been asked to substitute as organist since “retiring” last Christmas. Someone once said, “Organists never die; they just… Read More A litany of saints
“I need a project!” I told my husband, Carl, a couple of weeks ago. We were reminiscing about an all-Bach concert he and I played in 1979 in which between the two of us, we performed Bach’s Clavierübung III, the so-called “German Organ Mass,” a collection of 21 chorale preludes, bookended by the Prelude and Fugue in… Read More Back to practicing Bach
. . . and could only have one piece of music with me, what would I take? Well, I’m not anticipating being on a desert island anytime soon — but I am going on vacation next week. I’ll be packing my organ shoes, just in case I’m able to get to an organ. I’ve decided… Read More If I were on a desert island …
Sunday, January 8th was the Baptism of Christ and I programmed two settings of “Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam” by J. S. Bach. They were both from a collection called “Clavierübung” or “keyboard practice,” which is sometimes referred to as Bach’s German Organ Mass because there are chorale preludes on the Ordinary — the… Read More Amazing coincidences