Tonight’s concert featured two superstars of the organ world, Olivier Latry of Notre Dame cathedral of Paris, and his wife, Shin-Young Lee, who to me previously was unknown, but certainly as deserving as her husband the moniker of “superstar.” The concert took place at St. Ignatius Church, with a new organ by Hupalo & Repasky… Read More Twenty fingers, four feet!
As the horrifying images of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral on fire spread throughout the world, there was an overwhelming anxiety in the organ world, “What is happening to the organ?” I was especially alarmed when I saw this drone photo of the nave on fire. Surely, the organ was lost! It is the largest organ… Read More ‘It is a miracle!’
Every year the Three Choirs Festival features a celebrity organist and this year it was Olivier Latry from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. He was named titular organist when he was only 23 years old and Organist emeritus at the Orchestre National de Montréal from 2012. I first heard him play a recital in California… Read More Celebrity organist Olivier Latry
This video from my sister, Doris, is what greeted me when I opened up Facebook this morning. (Yes, it’s my birthday, and I’m going out to dinner three different nights this week!) Of course, I recognized the organ right away from the preview picture—I didn’t need to play the video in order to confirm my… Read More Pipe organ birthday greetings
My long-time friend, Edith Ho, formerly of the Church of the Advent in Boston, passed along this video of the recently-rebuilt organ at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the world of organs and organists. Although the video is narrated in French by… Read More The organ of Notre Dame Cathedral
Today was our first full day in Paris after a welcome dinner with our GoAhead tour last night. The tour has 15 people in it, with a great mix of people, young and old, a much more manageable number than we had in Iceland. Pilar is our guide—she is Scottish, but Spanish is her… Read More All the Paris highlights … In one day!
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
Here’s a cartoon that was posted to Facebook recently. It’s Pentecost this Sunday, a day I have always thought of as a “bookend” to the church music season — in spite of the fact that I have one more Sunday to play after that before going on vacation. For the prelude, I’ll be playing “Apparition… Read More Mysterious Messiaen