Many people think that because I spent thirty-five years of my life playing the Beckerath organ at the Lutheran Church Honolulu, I only play Bach and baroque music. That can’t be farther from the truth — I learned on a big Casavant organ at the Hollywood First Methodist Church and can push pistons and manipulate the… Read More Cortège et litanie
The Internet surely has been a vehicle of communication between people far and wide. I can’t tell you the number of people that have found my blog (well, yes, I can–to date there have been close to 200,000 hits on this site!) and I have reconnected with people I knew decades ago but have lost track. The… Read More My first organ teacher
On this last day of the AGO convention, we spent the morning in Wellesley, some 17 miles away from Boston, and went right to Houghton Chapel on the Wellesley College campus. On the Wellesley College website, you can read that: The organ built by the late Charles Brenton Fisk (1925-1983) for Houghton Chapel at Wellesley College is… Read More Morning in Wellesley
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
“At this pace, we won’t get to church until NEXT WEEK!” our driver said as we were sitting on the Mass turnpike. On Sunday we were picked up at 10:10 am — in plenty of time, we thought, for the 11:15 High Mass at the Church of the Advent in downtown Boston. But we found… Read More Get me to the church on time!
Just this morning when I opened my email, I got a notification that today is Marcel Dupré‘s 126th birthday (May 3, 1886 – May 30, 1971) and it brought back memories of our trip to France, three years ago, and specifically, our visit to Meudon, Dupré’s home, where I had my organ lessons. You might… Read More Happy Birthday, Marcel Dupré!
After that last post about getting discombobulated over the page turns in Bach’s Great Eighteen Chorales, some people suggested that I just memorize the music. Dear People, do you know that it is going to take two concerts to play all of this music? That is because I think it would just be too much… Read More Memorization
My last post generated a lot of discussion about the whole notion of poor pay being the reason for the organist shortage, especially considering the amount of preparation time required to play a church service. I suppose if you go back to my ten years of private organ lessons, four years of college with courses… Read More How much prep?
This Sunday, the LCH Choir will be singing two anthems by McNeil Robinson, an acclaimed New York organist and improvisateur. We first met Neil when he came to Honolulu to dedicate the Beckerath organ at LCH in 1975. At that time I was fortunate to spend about 20 hours in organ study with him and… Read More McNeil Robinson, musician extraordinaire
Today, November 1st, is All Saints Day, but at LCH we will move the feast to Sunday, November 6th, making it All Saints Sunday. Last week, Miguel Felipe and I did a switcheroo for the 8 am service. When I would have normally played the Hymn Mass for Reformation, Miguel played piano for the Alleluia… Read More Wood, Dupré and Bach for All Saints