After last night’s Dueling Bach concert for two organs was over, the videographer, Glenn Yoshida, said to me, “People kept turning their heads from side to side—I thought the audience was watching a tennis match!” Yes, the music bounced from one organ to another, just like a tennis ball (and just as fast)! We placed… Read More Bach tennis match?!
If you had gone to the Early Music Hawaii concert Saturday night, you may have seen this little blurb in the program: Upcoming concert of interest to Early Music lovers: Organists 1-2-3: Music for One, Two and Three Organs. For the first time in Hawaii, concertgoers will have the rare opportunity to experience music for one,… Read More Shameless self-promotion!
When the late Carl Crosier programmed Bach’s monumental St. Matthew Passion in the year 2000, he wanted to present the work as it was originally conceived for the Thomaskirche in Leipzig: for two separate orchestras, two choirs, and two sets of soloists. It meant we also needed two pipe organs, which meant purchasing a continuo… Read More Organ duets
Operation Babylift. If you are as old as I am (ahem!), you probably have heard the term “Operation Babylift.” But if you’re still a spring chicken, and aren’t old enough to know what it was, I can tell you that it was the name of a mass evacuation of children at the end of the Vietnam War in… Read More Operation Babylift
Quick study Bach. There’s an oxymoron for you. Why, just recently I heard myself saying to a student, “You cannot cram Bach! It just doesn’t work!” That is, when I’ve heard people try to learn a work of Bach on short notice, more often than not, they panic and the performance falls apart. Believe me, unfortunately… Read More Quick study Bach
I just finished playing my last gig for the Christmas season, Iolani School’s Winter Concert at St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Even though I have officially “retired” from playing daily chapels at the school, John Alexander invited me to play the Cathedral organ for the opening and closing numbers for the concert — I guess because the instrument… Read More Concerts, oboes and organs
I realize that when I wrote the last post, I didn’t clarify some of the details about the continuo organ at LCH at the first service I ever played here. It was the OTHER continuo organ, also called a positiv or positive, which the church purchased as an interim instrument when they decided to replace… Read More The Beckerath positiv organ
In contrast to the works of Marcel Dupré for All Saints morning service, tomorrow night at Vespers you’ll hear lots of Bach, not only the works by J. S. but also Johann Ernst Bach (1722-1777), who was the son of Johann Bernhard Bach (1676-1749). That would make Johann Ernst a nephew of Johann Sebastian. Johann Ernst… Read More Bach at night