Last week Tuesday (Sept. 11) I received the news that Whitney Thrall, retired piano professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, had died at age 96. My friend, Mark Russell, wrote this: Whitney passed away this afternoon very peacefully. It was the way he wanted to go. He didn’t wake up and just slowly… Read More Last one standing
Yesterday I attended the memorial service for Dr. Edward R. Shipwright, who was a piano professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for 30 years. I got to know Ed when I was hired to teach organ at UHM way back in 1974, and I joined the other members of the keyboard faculty every… Read More RIP Edward Shipwright
This afternoon Carl Crosier and I attended the wedding of Yuri McCoy and Asuka Okamoto at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, two musicians from opposite ends of the globe — he from West Virginia and she from Kobe, Japan. They met four years ago when they both attended the University of Hawaii to study piano. It was… Read More The union of musical minds