Gales of laughter and trading of “war stories” — this is what I enjoyed most about the luncheon I gave yesterday for four of my former organ students, home for the holidays from college. “All the congregations I’ve played for sing slower and s-l-o-w-e-r!” “The organist used the SAME registration throughout eight verses of the hymn!”… Read More Flip-flops? No, slippers!
I finally got a chance to sit down and read the December 2014 issue of The American Organist (also known as TAO) and a few names jumped out at me. The first one which caught my eye was the picture of Barbara Adler, who is Treasurer/Councillor for Finance and Development. Many people don’t know how instrumental… Read More Organists I know in TAO
As you can guess, I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks, with my husband’s illness and hospitalization, his death, the funeral, and the aftermath. So it is only now that I’m able to share my excitement about the New York City American Guild of Organists opening concert which took place on September 8, 2014. I… Read More A spectacular doublebill!
As organists, we always have to be prepared with a Plan B, in case Plan A doesn’t pan out. I have written about arriving at the church and having to make last-minute substitutions of stops for when a note is dead or stuck, or having to use a different manual. Or, in the case of… Read More Plan B, revisited
If you think that we are exhausted after having gone to an ALCM conference in Portland where we were going nonstop day and night, then coming to Boston for the AGO marathon, you are right. We took the morning off to sleep in and have a leisurely breakfast. The first concert we went to was… Read More AGO Boston: Day Four
Tuesday morning was the opening convocation at the Boston 2014 American Guild of Organists convention and as about 1800 of us organists and choirmasters gathered at the Church of the Holy Cross, I couldn’t help but think that this was not your typical Sunday morning congregation. Of course, how many in our parishes have 1800… Read More Not your typical congregation
The usual scheme of concert programming is to schedule one concerto on a single program. But for the opening of the Boston 2014 American Guild of Organists, we heard FIVE organ concertos in one sitting, and all FIVE played stunningly by James David Christie with the Boston Landmark Orchestra, Christopher Wilkins, conductor. The works were:… Read More Five concertos in one night!
We had to get up at the ungodly hour of 3:30 am (!) in order to make our plane to Boston, which left Portland at 5:55 am. We are staying in Newton Centre with our good friend, Edith Ho, who was for many years the organist-choirmaster of the Church of the Advent. She has recently… Read More We are in Boston!
Would you believe that there’s a Wikipedia entry for “Say cheese,” the phrase that is uttered to make one smile for the camera? What’s more interesting, though, is what is said in other countries. Here are some of my favorites: In China, the word used is 茄子 (qie2zi), meaning “eggplant“. The pronunciation of this word is… Read More Say “Cheese”!
From time to time, people ask me about my former organ student, Joey Fala, and I’m always happy to report that he’s doing fine and still playing the organ. If you click Joey Fala on the tag cloud to the right (and the size of the type indicates about how many posts I’ve written!), you’ll see… Read More The circles of life