Just as it was unusual to visit a pipe organ factory in Barcelona, I think what was out of the ordinary today was a visit to an icon workshop in the Meteora region. The owner, a Greek Orthodox priest, was occupied with church duties today, so his son gave us the tour (yes, Greek Orthodox… Read More An icon workshop
The following is the text of Scott Fikse’s farewell address to the congregation. I was secretly thrilled that he included my name! I give thanks to God for leading me and Marcus on a path that brought us to all of you. I’ve told this story to many of you, but when Marcus graduated from… Read More Scott’s farewell
Oh Carl! I don’t know how many times I said these two words over my lifetime—way more than several hundred, maybe even thousands of times. I said “Oh, Carl!” mostly in moments of exasperation, or resignation, but sometimes even in times of joy and elation. Or even to get his attention— “Oh, Carl, can you… Read More Oh, Carl!
You remember the legend of Sisyphus, don’t you?Sisyphus was a bad king whose punishment for his deceitfulness was to push a huge boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back to the bottom again. I had recalled this Greek myth in a prior post about playing Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary over and over and over… Read More Bridging the Centuries
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