You probably have heard this quote which has been attributed to Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who perished in the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle accident. She may not have originated the expression, but she did bring a T-shirt with this imprinted on it, and she certainly popularized it, according to a Wikipedia article I read. So,… Read More I touch the future, I teach
It’s not often that there are organ recitals in Hawaii. The Hawaii Chapter of the American Guild of Organists sponsors one recitalist per year, and that person plays a concert in Honolulu and another concert on a neighbor island. But this week, there will be TWO organ recitals on Oahu! Tomorrow night, the new organist… Read More Organ concerts galore
The latest bulletin board in the courtyard of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu focuses on the history of the music program with special focus on the Rudolf von Beckerath organ and organ concerts which have been held at the church since 1975. You may or may not know that Carol Langner, whom I call the… Read More Queen of the Bulletin Boards
This has been a week of reunions, a celebration of long time friendships that have lasted a lifetime. These friendships have all happened because of our common interest in the pipe organ. My current houseguest is Barbara Adler, whom I met in December 1972 on a visit to Hawai’i in anticipation of my move here.… Read More Old friends
The following is a story which was published on December 14, 2021, in the Duke Chronicle, a publication of Duke University in Durham, NC. Joey Fala is my former organ student, and now University Carillonneur. ‘The voice of the University’: Unearthing the history and tradition of Duke’s Chapel bells Joseph Fala leans into the music… Read More The voice of the university
It was my former student, Joey Fala, who first texted me this morning about the death of Edith Ho. “I just saw Edith Ho passed away.” He apparently had received the news from Walden Moore, (whom I met when I visited Joey at Yale) who wrote: So very sorry to hear of the passing of… Read More Tributes to Edith
Matchmaker, Matchmaker,Make me a match,Find me a find,catch me a catchMatchmaker, MatchmakerLook through your book,And make me a perfect match. (From Fiddler on the Roof, by Michele Marsh, Neva Small, and Rosalind Harris) Out of all my activities as an organist and organ teacher in Hawaii, I think my part in playing “matchmaker” is definitely… Read More Matchmaker
Maybe you saw the Washington Post opinion piece today, “It’s hard to sell a piano these days. It’s even harder to contemplate junking one.” Author John Ficarra, who was the editor of Mad magazine from 1985-2018, was lucky and ended up using it as a trade-in for a new instrument. Ficarra wrote: It hasn’t been… Read More Rescuing the unwanted
If you have been reading this blog since November 2020, you may remember the post I wrote about my husband’s fortepiano, “The fortepiano returns!” You may recall that my husband, Carl, was the recipient of a Philip Belt fortepiano upon the death of his college piano teacher, Else Geissmar. Then when Carl died, he bequeathed… Read More A new home for Else!
If she had not told me, tonight might never have happened. What I am talking about was the conversation I had with Cynthia Scheinert in 2003, former fifth grade home room teacher of Joey Fala, who told me about his fascination, no, his obsession with the organ so much that every school assignment, whether it… Read More A kid who had a dream …