Ordinarily I refrain from identifying children in this blog, but when this girl’s parents posted this video to YouTube, I figured that it’s okay. (And I got specific permission as well.) The video is of eight-year-old Sophia Stark, daughter of violinist Darel Stark and soprano Georgine Stark, who won the Hawaii Stars Vocal Competition, Keiki Division, for… Read More Like mother, like daughter
This weekend I’m going to two, count ’em, two vocal and instrumental concerts at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, featuring two performers who are husband-and-wife teams. The first will be Friday night at 7:30pm and will be presented by Early Music Hawaii. The concert by Asteria, called “Flower of Passion — Thorn of Despair,” featuring Sylvia Rhyne,… Read More Duo duos
Last Friday night, Early Music Hawaii presented a concert called “Oratorio,” 17th century sacred drama from Rome to Handel, in the reverberant acoustics of St. Theresa’s Co-Cathedral. Some of the town’s very best early musicians participated — and the dress rehearsal with choir and orchestra was held on Thursday night. The personnel for whom this… Read More Double, triple, quadruple!
Last week was a week of calm for me since I wasn’t able to teach any organ lessons — the reason being was that we hosted organbuilder Hans-Ulrich Erbsloeh from Hamburg, Germany and his colleague, Bernharndt Becker, while they replaced the worn pulldowns on the pedals on the Beckerath organ. It turned out to be… Read More A week of calm before the storm
Over the past three years, I have written many posts about Georgine and Darel Stark, who have been major players in the music program at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu — she a soprano, and he a violinist. Georgine just sang in my latest Bach Great Eighteen Chorales concert. From a post I wrote about their… Read More A star in the making
From the time I played my last church service on Christmas Day until last Saturday when I played for a funeral, I didn’t touch an organ keyboard. So I was understandably rusty — my fingers did not feel as though they were attached to my hands! and my feet seemed to have minds of their… Read More Musical hiatus
Certainly another highlight of this last Christmas was the multi-talented Stark family with its rendition of Katherine K. Davis’ popular “Carol of the Drum,” also known as “Little Drummer Boy.” They performed this piece as the Call to Worship at the 5 pm Christmas Eve service and the star, of course, was the Starks’ drum… Read More Little Drummer Boy
What a week itʻs been! but now that it’s Monday as I write this, we can feel the afterglow of the Glorious Gabrieli concert on September 29th, which on all accounts, was a glorious success. A bunch of LCHers were either involved in the concert (Darel & Georgine Stark, Karyn Castro, Jeremy Wong, Miguel Felipe,… Read More Glorious Gabrieli was glorious!
Can you believe it’s been almost two years since we celebrated Claudio Monteverdi’s 400th anniversary with two ground-breaking performances of his Vespers of 1610? Now we will celebrate the music of Giovanni Gabrieli (1554-1612), and this time it’s the 400th anniversary of his death. Over the past couple of weeks, Carl Crosier has been hard at… Read More Glorious Gabrieli
This Sunday, my organ voluntaries (prelude, communion and postlude) will feature works by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), one of Germany’s most important composers in the early part of the 20th century. Yet his output for the organ was minuscule compared to the total of his musical compositions. I’ll be playing one movement from each of his… Read More Three from Hindemith