Civic Lesson: Carol Williams talks about life as San Diego’s civic organist

A conversation with Steven Egler

Steven Egler is Professor of Music at Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1976. He was a student of Robert Glasgow from 1969 to 1981, during which time he completed the B.M., M.M., and D.M.A. degrees at The University of Michigan. Egler is also Councillor for Region V of the AGO.

SE: Please comment about the Gleasons, their teaching, and working with both of them.

RG: They’re both gone now. Harold way back [1980] and Catharine more recently [2003].

SE: How did they compare as teachers?

RG: Quite different from one another. She was very exacting. He was, too, but he was older--a generation older. I didn’t study with her except for some special repertoire. He would suggest that I take a particular piece to Mrs. Gleason that she’d been playing, so I could see what she had to say about it. That was interesting. I studied with Catharine for the whole summer after I had already finished the degree.

But Harold was somebody with a certain presence, because there was a wonderful human mind, sense of humor, and many, many years of experience--and not just in organ. In fact, some of his instructions would be to listen to some orchestral piece because it had something to do with what I was working on; so I did exactly as he told me to do. He had studio class every week--small class, five students.

Catharine’s main influence was in her playing. She played through her recitals before every time that she went on a tour, which was three or four times a year. She would play the tour programs for us up there in [Organ Studio] 427. We could watch everything that she did. Technique was all there. Everything was PERFECT. It was a wonderful example. No frothing at the mouth. Very elegant. THAT was most instructive.

SE: And it was always from memory, right.

RG: Yes.

SE: That’s interesting to me, about memorizing. What about extemporization?

RG: I wouldn’t give you a dime for an organist who couldn’t extemporize a little bit, who has to have every note written down on a piece of paper before he can play anything, who can’t even touch the manuals without having the notes down on the page. I-IV-V-I, if nothing more than that.

But they don’t seem to stress that enough everywhere. I don’t see why they can’t do it. Just scared to death. Make music, as it were. You know what I mean? If you leave your scores at home, on Sunday, go make music. Maybe find a hymn tune and just play on your own. But you know, we’re afraid of it, even though we’ve got music in us and enough technique in our fingers--but of course that takes daily practice.

SE: You’re absolutely right!

RG: It’s partly about your early experiences as a child. There was nothing wrong with sitting down and playing on the keyboard without having anything on the music rack.

SE: Your first teaching position was as professor at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois, from 1951-1962. It must have been very exciting to get a teaching position right after receiving your graduate degree from the Eastman School. Please describe how this appointment came about.

RG: The appointment was in May of that year, and I started teaching in September [1951]. I knew about the place because I knew of at least one student at Eastman from Jacksonville who had been a student of Ruth Melville Bellatti who was the teacher there before I was. There had been Eastman teachers there in the department of music.

The school was about to get a new four-manual Aeolian-Skinner organ in the chapel. It was a beautiful organ, and I was lucky to have it while I was there--the last 10 years that I was there.

I went back to play there, and they gave me an honorary doctorate [Doctor of Music]. [The recital and conferring of the degree took place on October 3, 1975.] It was a high point for me. That concert was the first concert on the Jacksonville/MacMurray Civic Music Series. They had all kinds of things, you know: orchestra, pianists, from all over--not just one area. They had a full house, as I recall. Do you remember Ruth Melville Bellatti?

SE: No. I only recall hearing the name.

RG: She was my predecessor there once removed. She was a classmate of Catharine [Crozier]. She was a superb player, and she was the one that really got the ball rolling on that new organ.

SE: Didn’t Harold Gleason design that organ?

RG: He had a lot to do with it. He made some suggestions.

SE: That would explain the connection to Eastman. 

RG: Many of the teachers had been from Eastman way back into the 1930s. Joe Clelland went there back in the 1930s and brought Ruth to the faculty. That was one of the best things they ever did. Then she got married to Walt Bellatti and started raising a family. That’s when they got Wilbur Sheridan for four years, and then just the time before the organ was to arrive, he left--went to a college in Washington state, and that’s how I got the position. I saw the new organ specification on paper and thought, “You’re leaving this?” Those were wonderful years. Catharine Crozier played the opening recital.

SE: Didn’t you direct the orchestra at MacMurray?

RG: That was the first year that I was there. The director/chairman called me in and asked, “Wouldn’t you like to conduct the orchestra?” “Sure, I can’t wait.” “Well, you’re the only one around here with any orchestral experience.” I said, “What, I haven’t had any orchestral experience.” “Yes, but you’ve PLAYED in one.” That means you are a conductor if you’ve played in an orchestra.

Well, such as it was. They had five violins, clarinet, bassoon, that was it. String bass, cello, and PIANO--fill in, you see. It was kind of pitiful there for a while, but I was game--I had no choice! They had to grab players anywhere you could find them--faculty, local residents, students--and nobody was any good. It was pretty bad, and I wasn’t much better.

We had a concert coming up right away--Christmas Vespers--and we had to get together right away. In the first place, I had to find something that I thought they could play amongst this VAST repertoire in their library. At the first rehearsal, about half of the instruments were there. The next week, it was just be another arrangement of people, sort of like pick-up. I thought that this was hopeless, so I told the pianist to play loud! We’ll have to have something to carry us through. That was my experience with that orchestra. 

I also taught counterpoint, which I wasn’t planning to do, but this other teacher had left. He was the string teacher and taught counterpoint.

SE: How were your organ students there that first year?

RG: The first year, I think that I had six, and I was lucky to have that many. They didn’t know me, and the organ was coming next year. Then I started playing over the radio every Sunday afternoon, and that got a lot of attention for that area. Then the students began piling in, and there were some very good ones.

One of the prides of that school was the chapel building, which is a handsome building, and the organ. In the meantime, they have acquired a new music and arts building.

SE: How did your appointment to The University of Michigan come about?

RG: It was late in the year and I had been out in Los Angeles to play for my first national convention of the AGO. Then I played for Clarence Mader at his church in Los Angeles that summer, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, Wilshire Boulevard.

Marilyn Mason had played in Springfield, Illinois that spring, and I went over to hear her, and I met her afterwards. Then, in a few days’ time, she called and asked if I would like to be considered for a job at The University of Michigan. There were no vacancies then, but that summer--June--it opened up. So they called me up, flew me back. I met with the dean and the executive board, and was offered the position. Just like that!

SE: Who was the dean of the School of Music then?

RG: James Wallace--a grand guy. Just first rate. He was an ideal dean. The door was always open to students and faculty alike. He was not impressed with himself. His trump card: he was very humane. He would never miss a faculty recital. If there were two on the same night, he would go to the first half of one and the second half of the other. It was the same with some of the older students. He’d show up! 

SE: What have been any highlights of your years at Michigan?

RG: There have been many, such as receiving the Harold Haugh Award for Excellence in Teaching; I appreciated getting that award. And the Eastman School of Music Alumni Achievement Award.

In February 2002, Eastman and the Rochester Chapter of the American Guild of Organists (organized by Tom Trenney) invited me back to do a masterclass for their students. They wanted me to do a roundtable discussion with David Craighead (“Conversation with the Masters”), talking about the “old days.”

Right at the end of that, the Director of the School of Music, James Undercofler, surprised me and presented me with [that year’s] award for Distinguished Alumni Achievement. It was like a diploma, and he read off the citation. This was a surprise, a big surprise.

SE: How have organ teaching and playing evolved over the course of your 50-plus years of teaching? Compare your current students to former students.

RG: Students have changed in the 40 years I’ve been here. They’re not as open and natural. They’re more guarded--not all--more so than they used to be. They had more fun then. It’s all very serious now.

SE: How has the Organ Reform Movement affected organ building and performance?

RG: Well, the level of organ building and tonal design has improved somewhat; but I still enjoy a good E. M. Skinner with certain repertoire, and I have some students who feel that way. They are really fascinated with E. M. Skinner’s philosophy (if you want to use that word). I don’t find anything very charming in the neo-Baroque ideal. Cavaillé-Coll built organs according to his own ideal. He didn’t copy something from before. We wouldn’t have the great 19th-century heritage in France if he hadn’t followed his own creative urge.

SE: What advice would you give to young organists entering the profession today?

RG: Try to think of yourself as a musician first and don’t worry about what’s the latest thing. Follow your own musical instincts. I grew up playing on a flat, straight pedalboard in Oklahoma City, on the only mechanical action organ in town at that time, and I think that it’s still there. It never wore out. It was one of those Hinners--workhorse of an organ--and they just didn’t wear out. Like Austin--it doesn’t wear out.

SE: Can you say anything about your long-standing friendship/collegial relationship with Orpha Ochse?

RG: I first met Orpha when she was new at Eastman, as I was. I was sitting there (fourth floor), and she came up and asked me, “Does it make any difference which of these organs we can practice on?” I said, “No, as far as I know.” We just became friends. The organ department had a lot of new students that fall (1949), but of course, I’d been there since late June--taking lessons, practicing, working--and that’s when I got my church job, which was why I was there so early.

Her personality, sense of humor--very droll sense of humor--you’d think that she was dead serious about something, but she wasn’t. And she had this incredible ability to see into things--the phony side of things, which I appreciated very much, at that time especially.

SE: That must be an incredible thing to have a friend like Orpha over such a long period of time.

RG: Well she’s a rare bird, that’s one thing for sure, and she is also an extremely intelligent bird. She has an unbelievably sharp mind, and therefore it is fun, but you don’t fool her for a minute.

And her books are universally regarded and essential in any organist’s libary: The History of the Organ in the United States; Organists and Organ Playing in 19th-Century France and Belgium, a great resource; and more recently her books about the Austin and Murray Harris companies.

SE: What were some of your favorite organs to play throughout your career?

RG: The 1911 Austin at First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City.

The 1920 Kimball organ at the Shrine Auditorium, Masonic Temple, Oklahoma City.

The 1918 Kimball at First Church of Christ, Scientist, Oklahoma City.

At the Eastman School of Music, the 1936 G. Donald Harrison Aeolian-Skinner in Strong Auditorium. This was a totally different idea of organ design. I hear they’re going to restore it.

Church of the Advent, Boston, Massachusetts, 1936 Aeolian-Skinner. It has some of the loveliest sounds that you will hear anywhere. It, along with the Groton School instrument (1935), represented Harrison’s new “American Classic” design.

High on this list would be Merner Chapel, MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Illlinois: 4-manual Aeolian-Skinner (1952).

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1934 Aeolian-Skinner. It has been through many transformations/revisions but is now restored (under the supervision of current organist and former student, Peter Stoltzfus).

Bridges Hall, Pomona College, Claremont, California, 2002 C.B. Fisk. I just heard this a few weeks ago, demonstrated beautifully by college organist Bill Peterson--such an organ and such playing!

SE: What various influences led you to devote your efforts to the romantic repertoire?

RG: I like the music! I loved the Franck D-minor Symphony and heard it performed before I actually played it in the high-school orchestra. The Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3--a recording that I had on 78 record--the reeds of that organ were compelling. I identified with the sounds of those instruments right away. I did not know much about Cavaillé-Coll, but I knew that I liked those sounds.

SE: Do you want to say anything about your performing career, Bob?

RG: Well, I enjoyed it while it lasted. I’m not performing any more. I have what is called atrial fibrillation. Have you heard of that? My heart doesn’t have any rhythm: it doesn’t know where the beat is. It goes crazy because you can’t get enough oxygen for it to operate correctly, so I’m taking all of this medication--I have been now for a couple or three years. It keeps me sort of on an even keel.

The last performance that I did, I almost couldn’t play. I’d been out to West Texas. What a trip--nightmare of a trip! Flying out there, changing in Houston, missing the connection, galloping through the terminal, then missing the connection, then pain all over every inch of my body. It was heart failure. The heart was trying to do the best that it could, but it couldn’t keep up. I didn’t know that at that time. 

I got to the church the next morning. The organ man was there and the organ wasn’t ready to play. He said that I’d have to come back later on in a couple of hours and that they needed more time. I never got to the organ until the night before the performance. It didn’t go very well. I was too tired, by the time I got to second half, I thought that the other pieces were ho-hum, ordinary. Then I thought that maybe this was the right time to “turn the corner.”

I then went to North Texas State University, Denton, Texas, which was presenting a conference on Cavaillé-Coll. I did a recital of that repertoire on that organ in the main hall, and that was hard to do, too. I was just exhausted, and I couldn’t get rested. I thought then, “Just cool it. You don’t need to do this the rest of your life.” The more that I thought that way, the more comfortable I felt.

I played Widor Seventh, complete, on the last part of the program. I got into the next-to-last movement (slow movement) and the organ ciphered, so I had to stop, of course. By this time, I was so dizzy that I didn’t know which way was up, so they came up to see about me. I told Jesse Eschbach, my former student, that I couldn’t go on and that he would have to help me out and that I couldn’t finish the recital. Meanwhile, the audience was wondering what was happening since I didn’t return. I was supposed to teach a performance class the next morning. I did get up and do that.

Then I went to Memphis. I got things worked out, but there was trouble with the organ and one of these impossible situations where the console is where you can’t get to it--you needed to be an acrobat! Nice acoustics, though. Nice organ--Schantz. So I didn’t go. I didn’t play. I cancelled out about an hour before curtain time--too dizzy!

They all seemed to understand when I told them what had happened. But that was the last time I attempted to play anywhere, and I thought then, “That’s it. I’ve done this now since I was that high, so that’s fine.” Having made that decision, I felt as if there was a big weight lifted off of my shoulders. But I’m sorry that I didn’t know more about it (my situation) before that performance because people were down there and waiting. So I got on the plane the next morning and flew back here, and that was it.

SE: So, what about retirement and the whole concept of retirement?

RG: The concept of retirement? Well, at The University of Michigan we have what they call a retirement furlough. It’s a nice deal. You have another year to do things that you want to do and get paid full salary. You teach as much as you want to or not at all. And they’ll furnish you with a studio or office.

SE: So, will you do that then?

RG: I’m going to stay right here for the time being--and then, we’ll see. I have no idea what I’m going to do after that. I think I’m going to get together all of my annotated copies of all the scores of Franck, some Widor, and some Sowerby, and get those out. That’ll take me the next 10 years!

SE: What about recording?

RG: The only thing that I regret is that I didn’t go on and record more than I did. I wish I had gone ahead and done all the Franck. I had that in mind, but I didn’t get to it soon enough. And I’m not too happy with what I did, although I’ve been told over and over again how wonderful it is, so I thought, “OK, if you think it’s so wonderful, I’ll shut up.”

That was a wonderful organ (All Saints’ Episcopal, Worcester, Massachusetts) for Franck, rather than packing up and going abroad. I didn’t want to do that. There’s a lot more to a “telling” performance than a particular organ. The particular organ does help, but I don’t think you have to have only THIS organ. If you do, you’re kind of stuck.

SE: Your legacy as a teacher and a performer are legendary, and you have been an inspiration to countless numbers of organists, myself included. What do you feel has been your greatest contribution to the organ world?

RG: Students (without hesitation), and I don’t hesitate a minute to say that, in spite of a few huge disappointments; yet some times I can’t stand them! But that’s more lasting. And maybe, to a certain extent, my performance, because you demonstrate what you’ve been teaching. One should be able to do that: put up or shut up. But I’ve done that over a period of how many years, so I didn’t feel too badly about realizing I couldn’t do it anymore or shouldn’t do it anymore.

RB: It’s like a chain of succession.

RG: Well, we now have the next generation of mine. I’ve been blessed the past 54 years with some extraordinarily talented students--almost too numerous to list here.

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of The Diapason.

Christopher Houlihan may very well be the youngest organist ever interviewed by The Diapason. A Connecticut native, Houlihan—sometimes known as “Houli”—made his debut album at 19 (a recording of the Vierne Second Symphony, made before he went to France in his junior year; see the review by David Wagner in The Diapaso, January 2009, pp. 19–20). His second recording (Joys, Mournings, and Battles, Towerhill Recordings) was recently released—a significant achievement for any artist, but all the more amazing given his youth. Houlihan, who placed first in the High School Division of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition (see David Spicer, “Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition 2003,” The Diapason, November 2003, p. 17), is a graduate of Trinity College, where he studied with John Rose; during his senior year he made his orchestral debut with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, performing Barber’s Toccata Festiva. Rose had insisted that Houlihan pursue some study with a different teacher, so during his junior year Houlihan studied with Jean-Baptiste Robin at the conservatory in Versailles, where he earned the French equivalent of an artist’s diploma. He also served as assistant musician at the American Cathedral in Paris, under Edward Tipton, working as choral accompanist and directing two children’s choirs. One Sunday when Tipton was away and Houlihan was to serve as both organist and choir director, the cathedral received a few hours’ advance notice that the President and First Lady of the United States, Mr. and Mrs. George W. Bush, would attend.
Houlihan’s first teacher, John Rose, described meeting the youngster prior to playing a recital—the young man and other family members came an hour early to get a bird’s-eye-view seat, in order to see the console and player up close. This initial meeting led to lessons with Rose at Trinity College, and subsequently to Houlihan’s matriculating there. Rose notes that one of Houlihan’s qualities is the ability to generate excitement about the organ and its music, to be able to communicate the music and his passion for it to an audience, and credits some of this to Houlihan’s technical mastery of rhythm and accent in way that makes the music “electrifying.” Rose feels that Houlihan’s “thirst for knowledge and learning” lead him to be “well informed about various performance practices,” yet realizing “the importance of bringing his own ideas and a fresh outlook to his interpretations. He also understands (and enjoys) the need to adapt his ideas uniquely, as needed, from one organ to the next.”
Christopher Houlihan’s fans are of all ages and include an 85-year-old retired math teacher at Trinity, along with students at the college; they have formed a group known as the “Houli Fans,” and this has expanded into marketing: t-shirts, caps, and mugs are available. Most of these students had never experienced an organ recital before supporting their friend. When he performed with the symphony during his senior year, they chartered buses to take throngs of students to the orchestra hall, where they rained down loud cheers from the balcony. Christopher Houlihan currently studies with Paul Jacobs at the Juilliard School, and is represented by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists (www.concertartists.com). Houlihan can be found on Facebook and YouTube, and his website is www.christopherhoulihan.com.

Joyce Robinson: Do you come from a musical family?
Christopher Houlihan: My family isn’t musical, but my parents have always been incredibly supportive of my passion. I think my mother signed me up for piano lessons just so I would have something to do after school. At the beginning I liked it, I thought it was all right, but I kept practicing and eventually joined a church choir in my hometown of Somers, Connecticut when I was about 8, and discovered the organ. The organ in the church was an electronic organ, and the organist there always had the tremolos on, but she showed me everything she knew and encouraged me to explore. She let me practice on the instrument. I was immediately excited by it and drawn into it, and I started reading as much as I could about the organ and tried to talk to other organists, but at the same time, I had no idea how to take organ lessons. It was obvious you could take piano lessons or lessons on any other instrument, but the organ was kind of a mystery to both my parents and me. My mother loves telling the story of walking into my bedroom and seeing me at my digital keyboard, moving my feet around. She discovered I had put rows of masking tape on her hardwood floor, in the outline of the pedalboard, so that I could learn how to play the pedals. She was a bit horrified that I had put tape all over her floor, but at the same time, she thought it was pretty clever.
Then, in 1999, my mother read in the newspaper that there was an organ concert going on in Springfield, Massachusetts. We’d never been to an organ concert before, never really heard any classical organ music, but we went, and I got hooked. I still have the program from that recital, and, looking back on it, I can’t imagine having had a better introduction to concert organ music: I heard Franck’s Pièce Héroïque and Vierne’s Third Symphony for the first time that day. After the concert, we spoke with the organist, and I said, “I want to take organ lessons, what do I do?” And the man said, “Why don’t you come down to Hartford and play for me?” This was John Rose. We went to Trinity, and I played for him; I was twelve years old, and he took me on as a student. From there, it just took off—I kept studying with him throughout high school, and when it came time to look at colleges, Trinity turned out to be a very good fit for me. John never pushed for me to go to Trinity; he would have been supportive of any decision I made, but for a lot of reasons I chose Trinity, and I’m really glad I did.

JR: Is that where your interest in Vierne came from? John Rose is well known for his work on Vierne, and your first recording was mostly Vierne.
CH: Yes, it was. John has been a wonderful mentor, and he’s never forced any particular style of playing on me, and I’ve studied all sorts of repertoire with him. But I do suppose I’ve had more exposure to Vierne than many other people, certainly because of his love of Vierne. I remember working on the “Berceuse” from the 24 Pieces in Free Style; that was probably my first Vierne piece.

JR: How old were you then?
CH: I’m not sure! I was in middle school, probably 13. Then when I got to Trinity, he said “You should really learn the Vierne Second Symphony, I think it would be a good piece for you.” And I learned it, and I absolutely loved it. Vierne is very chromatic, it’s very different from most Widor . . . Some people say things like, “You should never play a complete French symphony, it’s too long, it’s trash, audiences don’t like it,” but I find it incredibly gratifying as a performer and as a listener to hear a complete symphony. You rarely go to an orchestral concert and hear the Finale from a Beethoven symphony—you hear the whole work. I think a Vierne symphony works much better as a complete piece . . . the individual movements speak much more profoundly when you hear them in the context of the whole symphony.

JR: You must have worked on quite a bit of French repertoire with John Rose before you went to France.
CH: I did.

JR: And when you got to France, did you find the approach to French music to be different?
CH: That’s a complicated question to answer, but yes, the approach was very different. I went to France because I had a strong affinity for French romantic music, but I also wanted to learn more about French classical music, as well as study modern French music. Certainly one of the most beneficial aspects of studying organ music in France is hearing and playing on French organs. But having grown up on American organs, playing primarily in drier American acoustics, and approaching music from an American perspective in general, I really had to learn a new style of playing, one that was more effective for those instruments and rooms. My teacher, Jean-Baptiste Robin, often talked to me about “taste,” which is, of course, completely subjective, but I became more aware of the fact that taste is also cultural, and people from two different backgrounds (musical and otherwise) will have very different opinions about what they consider to be “in good or bad taste.” For example, sometimes I would phrase something a certain way, or accent something a certain way, and Jean-Baptiste would remark that it sounded “American.” Well, I am American, after all!
What is true, though, is that French music sounds most “at home” on French organs. One of the most incredible experiences I had was going to Poitiers Cathedral, where Jean-Baptiste Robin is titulaire, and hearing the 1791 Clicquot organ there. When I heard French classical music on that instrument I was almost in tears, it was so beautiful. That music came alive and worked in a way I had never heard it before. The same can be said of romantic music, but to a less extreme degree, when hearing it on French romantic organs. But what I’ve come to believe through those experiences is that what is far more important than choosing the historically correct stops, or playing in a historically correct way, is the type of musical effect that comes across to a listener. If hearing Widor played at St. Sulpice brings you to your knees, then that music should have the same effect wherever you’re playing it, and, typically, in my opinion, to get that kind of effect on American organs, you have to play the music in a very different way than you might in France.

JR: So are you saying that one must register more with one’s ears than just looking at labels on the knobs?
CH: Yes, absolutely. And at the same time, you don’t have to travel all the way to France to register that way. I think you have to go with your gut—you have to look for what’s the most musical solution when you’re registering anything. It’s not what the book says is the correct registration, but what has an effect—what makes the music come alive.

JR: Was there any particular aspect of registration that you had to make adjustments for when you returned to the U.S.?
CH: There are all sorts of things one can do. One basic idea that is important to know about is the upward voicing that a lot of the French organs have, where things really sing in the treble in a way they don’t on most of our organs. There’s not an easy solution to this, but it’s something to keep in mind and listen for. The other thing is that our Swell boxes are, generally, much more expressive even on smaller organs, and you can use them in a different way for the kinds of musical effects that naturally occur without moving the box on a French organ. The reason Franck used the Hautbois with his 8′ foundations was to make the Swell more expressive . . . if the oboe isn’t needed, I leave it off. Many American organs have the only chorus reeds in the Swell, and they might be quite loud; therefore, you don’t always have to play with the full Swell on where Vierne or Widor says “full Swell.” If you’ve only got a full Swell and one more reed on the Great, you don’t get a crescendo effect; you go from loud to louder. You’ve got to allow more liberty for these things, because in the end you’re being truer to the composer’s intentions . . .

JR: Tell us a little more about your time in France. Life in Europe is usually different than it is here, so what was it like for you—your schedule, your study, your practicing? Did you spend time learning the language?
CH: I was there through the Trinity College Paris program. They have about 20 to 30 students there each semester, and through that program I took French language classes, a class on French culture, a course on art history and architecture—they offer all sorts of courses, ranging from history of the European Union, to independent studies on anything you want to learn about. I did part of my coursework through them, and Trinity gave me credit for my organ lessons at the conservatory in Versailles, and my private harmony lessons with Jean-Baptiste.
I was also lucky enough to have an incredible job at the American Cathedral in Paris, working with Ned Tipton. I was the assistant musician, which meant that I accompanied the choir on Sunday mornings, and I directed two children’s choirs—the children’s group, and a teenager group—and along with all this I had an apartment in the cathedral tower, which was really incredible! You could climb to the top of the tower, and you had one of the most spectacular views of Paris. You could see all of the major monuments, really stunning. The cathedral is on the Avenue Georges V, which is right off the Champs Elysees . . . the whole experience was very surreal and I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity. And the people at the cathedral are so wonderful. There are a lot of Americans, of course, and people from England, from Australia, and French people too!

JR: During your time in France, you performed for George and Laura Bush at the American Cathedral in Paris. Can you recall that day?
CH: I’ll certainly never forget it. It actually began on a Saturday afternoon when I got a knock at the door of my apartment. Now, my apartment was 83 steps up a cement spiral staircase, so I didn’t get very many knocks on the door . . . I was fairly surprised to discover the dean of the cathedral and two French police officers with enormous rifles standing in front of me. They explained who would be coming for a visit the following morning. To complicate things, Ned was away, the adult choir hadn’t had a rehearsal the previous Thursday, and we had the children’s choir scheduled to sing that morning too. Unfortunately, we had to keep the news completely secret for security reasons, so I couldn’t let the choirs know what would be happening. Sunday morning was a little hectic . . . security came and set up metal detectors, dogs sniffed through the whole building, and of course, they didn’t care that I had a choir to rehearse! We wound up with about 15 minutes to run through the anthems, but we pulled it off pretty well.

JR: What were your studies like with Jean-Baptiste Robin?
CH: Robin was an excellent teacher and I learned a great deal from him. At his recommendation, we spent the year working almost exclusively on French music, and nothing could have made me happier. Each week I would prepare a different piece, by de Grigny, Marchand, Couperin, or one of the other French Baroque composers. We worked a great deal on Franck, of course, on Alain’s Trois Danses, as well as one of Robin’s own pieces, Trois Éléments d’un Songe.

JR: What made you choose Juilliard for graduate study? For that matter, why even bother with graduate study, because you had already made a recording, you were signed to professional management before you even got a bachelor’s degree, if my calculations were correct?
CH: True. I chose Juilliard because I really wanted to work with Paul Jacobs and I have had a wonderful time studying with him. I’ve been lucky at this point to have studied both at Trinity and at Juilliard, and have had vastly different experiences at both schools. At Trinity, the focus was on studying music in a broader context—a liberal arts school; I took classes in all sorts of things: science, math, philosophy—it was wonderful, and I made friends with all sorts of people studying all different subjects, and I can’t say enough positive things about how that can affect one’s perspective on making music. But I really felt I was ready to study music in a much more intense environment, and Juilliard was a great choice for that. I love being in New York City, being at Juilliard, and working with Paul. It’s been very rewarding.

JR: Has it been an opportunity to learn a lot of new repertoire, or just refine what you already know?
CH: One of the unique things about the Juilliard program is that we’re required to perform a new piece each Thursday morning in our organ studio class, which is open to the public. And that was definitely a big draw to go there, to learn a lot of repertoire. It can sometimes be difficult to learn a piece very deeply when you’re going through so much music so quickly, but you can always bring things back to Paul and work on them more, and of course work on them more on your own, which is where the real music happens, spending time getting to know the music very intimately. To touch on the last question again, even though I’ve been lucky to have these opportunities to record a CD and study in France and work under management, which I’m incredibly grateful for and excited by, I believe one never really stops learning. Juilliard has been a wonderful place for me to grow more as a musician, and I hope to continue to do that for the rest of my life.

JR: You have a website, and a presence on Facebook—do you find that these media help build your audiences?
CH: I’m not sure, but I do think they’re incredibly important tools. How many people are on Facebook now? I have no idea, but there’s no reason not to take advantage of it and to be communicating in the world where most people are interacting today. I don’t know if my online presence necessarily helps build my audience, but it certainly doesn’t hurt it. It certainly helps attract younger people.

JR: Do you notice that your audience has a younger demographic than that of other organists?
CH: I don’t think so, not yet at least, but attracting younger people to classical music is something I feel very strongly about. And one of the greatest things I experienced at Trinity was bringing my friends who weren’t musicians to my organ concerts, and getting them excited about it. They responded very positively.

JR: Would that be the Houli Fans?
CH: The Houli Fans grew out of that, from friends of mine who weren’t musicians, but who came to my organ concerts and got excited by the music and discovered something far more fantastic than they ever expected to. I would have never guessed some of my college friends would greet me by humming the opening bars of Vierne’s Second Symphony—or talk to me about how fascinating a Bach fugue was. Houli Fans has caught on in a very organic way, and audiences everywhere I go are interested to hear more about it. At Trinity, students came to the concerts and saw that I loved performing, thought the music was exciting, and they responded by getting more people to come! This is such a good sign for organ music, to see people, of any age, who don’t know anything about organ music responding to it. I think in a way the organ may stand in a better place now than it ever has, I suppose you could say—it has been so dismissed and ignored for so many years, that now it stands to be rediscovered. We’ve all been in situations where people ask about being an organist. They really don’t know what that is, they don’t know what that means, what we actually do. When they hear exciting classical organ music, they’re so wowed by it—it’s true. I’ve played recitals this year and people come up to me and say, “This was my first organ concert and it was way better than I ever expected!” I tell them, “Now go tell somebody else. And come back again and bring them!” Once people discover what’s going on, they’re excited by it. And that’s a really good sign.

JR: Do you see any special role for technology such as iPods or YouTube to advance organ music, or are those just tools like a CD would be?
CH: I think what’s important is reaching as many people as you possibly can. And people are on Facebook, on YouTube—a lot of people are using these things, and if we ignore them (and I’m not suggesting we necessarily are), you’re ignoring a big part of your audience. So I think it can absolutely help. YouTube is a fantastic resource for hearing and seeing performances—it’s an incredible archive of music and musicians and organs and all kinds of music, not just organ music, and quite a tool for marketing and advertising. Everything links to something else, and people can see you and discover other organ music and other performances.

JR: Well, back to the Houli Fans. What are they up to these days?
CH: We have shirts and hats and coffee mugs, and people are really responding well to it. Everywhere I’ve been this year I hear “Oh, I’m going to join the Houli Fans” and “I’m your newest Houli Fan” and things like that. And I find that both musicians and non-musicians want a very fun way to connect with the performer and somehow be involved in the performance. It’s fun!
And there’s nothing wrong with having a little bit of fun, or with classical music being fun. It’s been fun for centuries!

JR: You also have an interest in musical theater. Do you have much time for that any more?
CH: No, not right now, in graduate school, and with a busy performance schedule. But I did a lot of it in high school—I was music director of several shows. That was a lot of fun, and actually a really great learning experience. And I did a lot of it in college, too—music directing, performing on stage, singing, dancing, and all of that. I really enjoy it. At the moment I don’t have plans to do it professionally, but it’s a small passion of mine. I particularly love the music of Stephen Sondheim, and, coincidentally, I’m going to be inaugurating the organ at the Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts in Fairfield, Iowa.
I think there’s a lot that musicians can learn from theater, both from straight drama and musical theater, about how to approach a musical score, similar to the way an actor takes a script and analyzes everything that’s going on to create a character, and perform that character night after night. I try to approach music the same way—take the score and truly consider how to create a musical experience—in a way . . . a whole play. Not necessarily a story, but create the kind of experience I’d like to have as a listener. I think there’s a lot we can learn from theater and the other arts.

JR: Of what you’ve worked on so far, is there any particular repertoire you found a difficult nut to crack—you mentioned finding the character and learning how to bring that out; is there any music that’s been, say, a little more opaque for you?
CH: One of the most incredible things about the organ literature, and one of the most daunting, is the centuries that it spans. All this repertoire and all these different styles—personally, I think it’s impossible to be fluent in and to perform all these styles in a convincing way. Maybe it’s possible; I’d like to be wrong. When I’m learning a piece in a different style that I haven’t studied before, I try to approach it with respect for the scholarship that’s been done on it and its performance practice, but also perform it in a way that feels honest to me, so that I can perform it and convince the audience of the music. I don’t think there is much value in performing something just because you think you should—that you should play so-and-so’s music. Well, what if you don’t like so-and-so’s music? A lot of people may like so-and-so’s music, and a lot of scholars may say it’s important . . . But I don’t have to perform everything under the sun.

JR: In one of Gavin Black’s regular columns in The Diapason, one of his points was that if you don’t really like something, why waste your time learning it? Life’s too short—unless you’re in a competition and it’s required.
CH: At the same time, I’ve learned some pieces—I’m not sure I can name a specific one—where I’m not sure about it at the beginning, or I think I’m not going to like the piece. But then after I learn it I think, “Wow, now that I’ve studied it, and learned more about what the composer was trying to do, and found ways to make it come alive for my own performance, it really is a good piece.” And sometimes I decide to learn a piece, starting off by thinking it’s a great piece, and then after becoming more familiar with it, decide “This isn’t right for me.” It works both ways.

JR: You’ve already recorded two CDs—are you preparing any other recordings? What are your other plans for the future?
CH: I hope to be able to keep recording, and I hope to be able to continue performing. I really enjoy traveling and meeting new people, but most importantly, I love performing and bringing music to an audience. I believe it’s more like making music with an audience. Sometimes I even tell that to the audience too—I thank them for making music with me, since I can’t do it by myself, and since I get so much joy from performing. Eventually, I’d love to be teaching and sharing my love of organ music with others in any way I can.

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of THE DIAPASON.

James and Marilyn Biery are two very active composers, performers, and church musicians. Husband and wife, they share leadership of the music program at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota. They met at Northwestern University, where both studied organ (that organ department, as most know, no longer exists).
Marilyn Biery, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in organ and church music from Northwestern, and a DMA from the University of Minnesota, served as director of music at First Church of Christ in Hartford from 1986–96; she is now associate director of music at the Cathedral of St. Paul. James Biery, who also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in organ and church music from Northwestern, served as director of music at Holy Trinity Church in Wallingford, Connecticut from 1982–89, and from 1989 until 1996 as organist and director of music at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, assuming the position of director of music at the Cathedral of St. Paul in 1996.
Both Bierys are prolific composers (see the complete list of their works on their website, <http://home.att.net/~jrbiery/&gt;. Their works are published by MorningStar, GIA, Oregon Catholic Press, Boosey & Hawkes, Alliance, and Augsburg Fortress. Marilyn has also been a contributor to The Diapason (see “The Organ in Concert,” January 2005). We visited with the Bierys in St. Paul in July 2007.

Joyce Robinson: How did you get into this? Marilyn, you were a pastor’s kid, so you had that early exposure. James, how about you?
James Biery: I was a kid of parents who went to church! (laughter) Actually, my grandfather on my mother’s side was a minister, so that’s in my blood. We went to church, a fairly little church in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, but it was fortunate enough to have a pipe organ, a five-rank Reuter. It could shake the pews, in its own way, and it made an impression.

JR: How old were you when you got on the bench?
JB: Eleven, maybe ten.
Marilyn Biery: I was eleven. I looked through my diaries and I had the date of my first organ lesson! Isn’t that cool.
JB: It’s a funny thing, but you get the bug somehow. And it was pretty strong. After I’d seen a real music program in Omaha, and started studying with a real organ teacher, then I really got hooked.

JR: I find it interesting that you, Marilyn, have a doctorate in organ, and James, you went the route of getting a master’s and then the AGO’s Fellow and Choirmaster certificates.
JB: I went through a little period when I thought it was fun to do that. Schooling is not my cup of tea.
MB: But I like school. James reads books and does all these things on his own—like the [AGO] Fellow and the Choirmaster; he did that all on his own.
JB: That’s not really true. We had gone to New York at that point, to study with Walter Hilse, improvisation and various things. I enjoyed that.
MB: But he still reads books. I only do if I’m taking a class.
JB: Everyone has their motivators.
MB: So I needed a class—a regimen and a schedule. Actually, I started my doctorate in conducting; I didn’t want another degree in organ. I started it in Connecticut; then we moved, and I thought that I was going to finish it in conducting, but at that time they didn’t have a doctorate in conducting in Minnesota, believe it or not. The state with St. Olaf and such places, yet a conducting doctorate just didn’t exist! So when I moved here, I was for one very short semester looking at the orchestral program, but decided pretty quickly that I wasn’t interested in being an orchestral conductor. I switched back to organ. It was a good thing. It was fun.

JR: You’d both been in Connecticut in separate positions. When you came to Minnesota, was it just you, James, taking this job?
JB: Yes.
MB: He was nice. I said I’d be happy to move if I could just go and not have to work, because I was in the middle of the degree, and at that point I had decided that I was going to be a director of choral activities in a college. That was my career goal. I wasn’t thinking “church job.” We agreed that we would move and figure out if we could live here on his salary, and I’d go to school and find something else. There was a budget for an assistant position, which they had before, so he started interviewing people as soon as he got here; and along about November, said, “let’s just hire Marilyn.” So it was a temporary thing and I just never left.
JB: It worked out nicely because we went through the process—we advertised the position, we were interviewing and auditioning, and I had a committee. We reached a certain point where one of the people on the committee said “Why aren’t we just hiring your wife?” But it was better that it didn’t come from me; rather, it came from the parish.
MB: So I did that part-time for three years; when I finished the degree in ’99, the pastor said, “please put in a proposal to increase your hours to 20 hours a week.” At that point it was perfect to just keep it at 20, because our daughter was ten. It was so nice to work in the same place. We knew we could work together, and in fact we’ve done things together almost our whole married life. The building needs two people; in fact, more than two people.

JR: But you knew that working together would succeed.
MB: Oh, yes. We’ve done it for years. When we were students together, we’d do things together, and then before I finished my degree we were in one church and we used to do some things together. We’ve been together for 30 years. I’ve always helped out at his churches, and he’s always helped out at mine. I always knew we’d enjoy working together. I just like being in the same room with him all the time! (laughs) I like to hear him play the organ and we like to do things together.

JR: James, you are director of music at the cathedral, and Marilyn, you are associate director. Are you the entire music staff?
JB: Well, yes and no. We have music staff at the diocesan level too. Michael Silhavy is in charge of diocesan events. We are also fortunate to have Lawrence Lawyer as our assistant in music, helping with a multitude of musical and administrative duties.

JR: Who does what?
JB: In order to cover everything that happens in the building, there really are four of us who are regularly employed here.
MB: Who are actual musicians and not administrative.
JB: We’re talking about organists and directors.
MB: For diocesan events, where the bishop comes, we have Michael, who’s next door, who does those, with our help. But he can ask anybody in the diocese, so if he knows that it’s a really busy time for us, he can ask someone at the seminary to come in and play for an ordination Mass. Michael doesn’t get involved with anything on a parish level. There is a separate choir he conducts, which is mostly volunteers, about 60 or 80 people. We do the day-to-day work, but we get involved when he asks us. Michael used to work at GIA years ago, then he moved to the cathedral in Duluth, then moved down here as the worship center director. We’ve known him for almost twenty years.
We do four weekend masses with organ; there is another one with cantor only, just a sung Mass. Right now all three of us are going to be at the choir Mass, which is our high Mass. We both play the organ, we both direct; Lawrence Lawyer, our music assistant, at this point doesn’t do any directing, but we’re hoping he will. We have the Cathedral Choir at the 10 am Mass and we both switch off and do everything—if we’re not playing, we sing. I do another weekend Mass, and we rotate, and he’ll do two Masses a weekend and Lawrence does one. The St. Cecilia Choir is the kids’ choir, and all three of us do that. You can listen to sound bites of that on the web. (See <www.cathedralsaintpaul.org/calendars/sounds.asp&gt;.)

JR: What’s the size of your main adult choir?
JB: 30–35.
MB: It fluctuates. There are nine section leaders, and then we have 20 or 25 really good volunteers. The main core is 30.

JR: How many children’s choirs are there?
JB: One.
MB: We started branching off by using the older girls for some things, so we’ve developed a group of six or eight older girls that we call the Schola. We also invented something new for the boys, because a lot of them are home-schooled kids. So they come with their families.
JB: We just really didn’t have the heart to turn them loose when their voices changed. One family, just the sweetest people, asked if there was something we could do. My first answer was no, I’m sorry, it’s a treble choir. Then I thought about it for a week or two, and talked to the person who was then running it with me, and we decided to figure out a way to deal with this. We’re doing the Voice for Life program, the RSCM program, which is very nice. So at first we occasionally had them sing on some things, but it’s gone even beyond that now. We had three of these boys with changed voices last year, and they were doing some things on their own, too.
MB: We had them ring handbells—if you listen to one of our pieces that’s on the website, his O Come Divine Messiah—that’s everybody. That’s our daughter playing the oboe, and the main chorus singing the whole thing; the Schola sings the middle section, and the boys are ringing the bells. We’re doing two pieces this year where we taught them the bass line—I’m sure one of them’s going to be a tenor—but James taught them how to read the bass line.
JB: Another wonderful thing as you know with Voice for Life—they have some musical skills, rudimentary, but in some ways, better than some of our adult singers.
MB: They learned the bass part of an Ave Verum of Byrd, and then of the Tallis If Ye Love Me, and With a Voice of Singing. The girls who were trebles sang the soprano part with the adult choir, and the boys—I put them in with the basses, and the basses loved it. Some day, some choir director in some church somewhere is going to thank us because she’ll have these three boys who then, grown-up, will still have it in them.
As cathedrals go, and I could be wrong about this, we have one of the more active parishes in the United States. But it’s just like any kind of city church—the parish, for the children and for the parish choir in a building like this, is usually smaller than in suburban churches. We have 30 kids in the choir, which we think is really good. I’d love to have 50!
JB: The parish tends to be more singles and folks who move in and out—a large turnover; some families too.
MB: For a while, our biggest parishioner group was the 29 to 39 single female. We had a lot of young professional women in the choir.

JR: How do you divide the conducting and accompanying tasks?
JB: One thing that we discovered along the way is that for the most part it doesn’t work to switch off conducting and organ playing in the middle of a concert. (chuckling) We used to do that, and it just makes things harder. There’s something about the continuity and how to budget time and that sort of thing. So we did stop doing that a few years ago. Working backwards from that, the one concert that we do every year is around Advent/Christmas. It will work out that whoever is conducting that concert will do a lot of the rehearsal through November–December. But that’s the exception. During most of the year, we just split things up—sometimes it’s back and forth in a rehearsal, sometimes she’ll take half of the rehearsal and I’ll take the second half—it depends what we’re doing.
MB: He sings baritone, and I sing soprano. You know the Allegri Miserere, the one with the high Cs—right now we only have one person in the choir who can sing the high Cs. So it means that he has to conduct, because I have to sing those. My voice tends to be better for the Renaissance things; I don’t have much vibrato, and it’s a small, light tone. During Lent I do more singing with the choir, because we do more Renaissance works then, and he’ll do most of the conducting, whereas we need him more for pieces of other periods, so then I’ll conduct more of the things we need him to sing on; if we have brass and such and it’s a big celebration that needs improvisation, we’re more comfortable having him at the organ and me conducting. The things needing a lot of filling in or improvisation—he tends to get those. The last deciding factor is whoever’s not sick of something. Sometimes I’ll say, “I conducted that last time, you do it”— it’s more a matter of what would be most fun to do next time.
JB: One thing that sets us apart from 99% of the rest of the world is that neither of us likes to have an anthem marked—with all the breathing, and the interpretation. And then everybody has it marked, we sing it the way we did last time, and the time before that, and the ten times before that! That just drives us both nutty—because every time we bring out a piece, you have different singers, things are always a little different, you have a little different idea of how the piece should go, or maybe you’ve actually even learned something about it! Part of it sometimes is boredom—you know, “I’ve done this piece five times in a row, it’s time for you to do it.” It drives our singers nutty, because most of them come from other choirs where you have markings in your part, and you can expect that the conductor will do it that way. And people who have sung with us for 11 years will say, “But I have marked a breath there”—well, we don’t want a breath there this time! (laughter)

JR: Since both of you are composers, how do you handle pieces you’ve written? If you wrote an anthem, do you play it, do you conduct it?
JB: That’s a great question, because sometimes if you’ve written a piece, you learn more if you’re not the one who conducts it. I think frequently we might do it that way. If it’s a piece that I’ve written, that I want to try out, I will have her conduct it, because then I’ll find out how clear I have been in the notation—there are written indications that somebody else will interpret totally differently from the way I think it should be.
MB: He tends to write more choral things right now, and I tend to do a few more organ pieces. So he tends to play my organ pieces, more than I do.
JB: Another thing I like is if it’s a piece that we’re trying out, I would prefer to just listen, or if it’s accompanied, just sit at the piano or organ, and not be in charge.
MB: I generally tend to do more of the conducting in his pieces, too. When we celebrated our tenth anniversary at the cathedral, we had decided that I would do all the conducting. In fact, the program says that I did all the conducting. But then there were two pieces, which aren’t marked in your program, that at the last minute we decided Jim should do, partly because of the makeup of our sopranos—he always conducts the Ubi Caritas—and they’re more used to him.
JB: It kind of breaks the rule of what I was just saying. In that case, they’re kind of used to doing it in a certain way. We had to do all these things in a short rehearsal time, so—
MB: It was easier. The other piece was Ave Maria, and the sopranos needed me, so at the last minute we decided to switch, and he conducted those two pieces, and I did the rest of the conducting. We have a recording of that. We also have done hymn festivals, with Michael, where we put our two choirs together.
JB: Michael is very interested in hymnology. He has a gift for being able to put things together in interesting ways, and he can also write a really nice script for a program like that.
MB: For one of our Christmas programs, we had a set of poetry commissioned, Near Breath, which is really wonderful, from Anna George Meek, one of our section leaders. The whole program was based around that, and she intertwined the music we were doing.

JR: The cathedral is quite a presence—for instance, you’ve had the Minnesota Orchestra playing here, doing the Bruckner symphonies, and those were conceived for a cathedral-type ambiance.
JB: We are really excited about that. Osmo Vänskä, that’s his baby.

JR: Is that something you originated?
JB: No, he was behind the whole thing. He came to us with his proposal to do this. The performance is done two or three times, only once in the cathedral, but the cathedral one is the “main” performance—it’s the one that gets broadcast, and so forth.
MB: There are organizations that use the building a lot—Philip Brunelle uses it a lot for VocalEssence. Every time they bring over a boy choir group, they use the cathedral; I’m not sure why not the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, except that probably we seat more people.
JB: I think also he has sort of a Minneapolis group, so it’s an outreach to come over to “this” side.
MB: It’s just too much of a cavern for a small sixteen-voice group. We’ve had other groups like the National Lutheran Choir try it, and they ended up over at the Basilica of St. Mary too, because the room’s too wide, too big. You can have too much acoustic.

JR: Did either of you formally study composition? James, you reportedly taught yourself—studying organ literature and orchestral scores.
JB: Marilyn thinks that’s how it started out, and I think she’s right!
MB: We used to play duets. When we started out as players, we wanted to play organ duets and we still do—we do two-organ things now too—but there isn’t much repertoire out there that’s really very interesting.
JB: We got bored in a hurry. So I just started looking around for different things to do, and the transcription idea was appealing, and it ended up being intensive score study.
MB: I’ll never forget his very first piece—his parents had died and he was in a situation where the church was full-time but it didn’t take up his whole day. And we lived nearby and I was gone most of the day.
JB: At times it was very, very busy, but then there were other times when, frankly, there wasn’t that much to do.
MB: I remember coming home, and he had said to me earlier, you know the famous Make Me a Channel of Your Peace—he said, kind of on a dare to himself, “I think I could write something on that text and I think I could get it published.” He’d never written anything before except little choral sentences or whatever. I came home from Hartford one day, and he said, “I wrote a piece today.” And that kept happening for a while. I’d come home and say, “What did you do today, dear?” “Oh, I wrote a piece.” (laughter)
JB: One day, she came home, and I said, “I wrote a Christmas piece, only it needs words. No hurry!”
MB: “—but I want it for my rehearsal next week.” (laughter) He said “I want to do it for our Christmas program,” and could I do some text? He showed me the tune, and I sat right down and wrote something, and we got that published pretty fast. He always says “I don’t need it right away—but could you do it tomorrow?”

JR: Do you have any compositional process, or do you just hear a tune going through your head and take it from there?
JB: Grief.
MB: Grief and angst and paranoia—both of us. He’s just as bad.
JB: Everything’s a little different. So I don’t know if there really is any “process.” Choral music is different from organ music.
MB: We do things without the keyboard, sometimes. But I always use it, as I need to.
JB: I have found that the things that I’m most proud of and happiest about are pieces where the bulk of the whole thing has been done at one session—like in one day. It takes weeks or months to finish it and flesh out all the details, but I do find that the best things are done at one sitting.

JR: Do you have a keyboard hooked up to “Finale” at home?
JB: We do.
MB: He just built us a “virtual organ.” He ordered the pedalboard and the keyboards, and he has it hooked up—which organ are we playing right now, whose is it?
JB: It’s a Casavant organ, from Champaign, Illinois.
MB: It’s a great little practice instrument. Our basement’s small. It beats an electronic. It sounds just like a real organ.
JB: I can play that thing for hours on end and not get sick of it, which is saying a lot. I never have run into any electronic where I could do that. It has the advantage of being connected to the computer.
MB: We can compose on it. I’ve just started using it. I’m not as computer-happy as he is; I love to use it once it’s all set up, but he has to show me and then I’m fine.
JB: It has been interesting to grow with this technology, because I always used to write things out, paper and pencil, first, and then gradually move to the computer program. I found as the years have gone by that the computer portion of that has crept in earlier and earlier in the process. In fact, it’s right at the beginning now; even if I do write things on pencil and paper, generally there’s a computer file to start with.
MB: It looks nice, and my handwriting’s terrible, and for me I just put everything in after I plunk away, and then I can fiddle with it.
JB: We have our laptops, and once you get a piece to a certain point, you can just sit there and listen to it, and change things around, and you don’t have to be anywhere near a keyboard.
MB: I’ve been doing more words lately—organ music and more texts. The one I’m happiest with is my setting of the Beatitudes—everybody wants to sing them, and there just are not many choral settings that don’t get pretty redundant.
JB: It’s a hard text to set. The form doesn’t really lend itself too well. She did a strophic hymn that’s inspired by the text, to get around that problem. And I think it’s really very nice.
MB: That took a year. But anyway, Jim has a piece based on it, too, with descant, and middle stanza parts.

JR: Tell me about Stir Up Thy Power, O Lord, which is a nice anthem for a small choir.
JB: That anthem is almost entirely in unison. In fact, it could be done in unison. It’s kind of surprising. We have a composer friend who heard the premiere of that, and he has a very sophisticated ear, and one of his comments at the end was that he wasn’t really quite aware that it was almost all unison! I thought that was a very nice compliment.

JR: Congratulations, you got ASCAPLUS awards in 2006 and 2007.
JB: Yes. It is really a nice little program, because it recognizes composers who have pieces that are actually being performed, but in places that don’t generate performance fees, namely in churches. I fill in an application, then I Google my name and try to find all these places where things are being done, and it’s amazing! But they’re all at church services, or occasionally recitals and things.
MB: College choirs do his O Sacrum Convivium a lot, and O Holy Night.

JR: Marilyn, let me ask you about your new music championing. You wrote an article for The Diapason about MorningStar’s Concert Organ series, and last I looked it has three dozen titles in it. Is it doing well?
JB: The publisher is not pulling the plug on it, so I think that’s a good sign.
MB: I’ve been so disappointed all along in the way people are NOT interested in new music—we’ve noticed it in our own things, and I’ve noticed it a lot with organ music. I am disappointed in the lack of widespread interest in simply supporting these composers.
JB: My theory is that the problem is that there was a period where there was so much avant garde music and music that was just plain hard to listen to, and so many people got turned off to the idea of new music. It’s too bad, because many composers are writing very easy-to-listen-to music now. If anything, I’d say that’s the preponderance of what’s being written.
MB: I think it’s coming back.
JB: I don’t think the market has caught up with the new trend yet.
MB: And it’s hard to get things published.
JB: And organists—well, churches—tend to be on the conservative side, so that enters into the picture too.
MB: I think that the more original you are as a composer, the harder it is for your piece to get published. One composer I was working with for so long wrote this incredible organ duet and other pieces that were so amazing, and one response from a publisher was, “it’s a magnificent piece of music, but it simply won’t sell.”
JR: How did you get into writing texts?
MB: We took a hymnody class together at Northwestern. After that hymnody class, and feeling “gee, I’d like to do this,” I would do a few a couple times a year, and I had maybe a dozen, but in my mind I felt that I’d written a hundred in my life. All of a sudden I thought, “wait a minute, I’m in my forties, I write one a year—how am I going to get up to a hundred? This is not going to work.”
At that time my dad died. And—I think you have to have suffered a little before you can write any kind of hymnody. And I had quite a bit of suffering. My dad had Alzheimer’s, as his father did, and I was there at the end. His pastor said this wonderful prayer over him as he was dying, about how he knew that Al was in two wonderful places: he was very present on earth, that he can feel all his family’s love, and yet he’s one step into heaven and he can see the glory. It set off a hymn, which I knew was inspired from that. So I wrote a bunch of hymns; I must have written three, four, five dozen. I’m not quite up to a hundred, but I’m not dead yet!
JB: For a while, Marilyn was doing it as a daily discipline. You were going through the meters—sitting down and writing one every day.
MB: That was hard to keep up every day. It’s like practicing an etude every day, after a while you have a certain amount of technique. But I miss the discipline of it; I’ve gotten out of that habit. I did that for about a year or two. Now I do things on request, or if he has something and he wants help. And this year, do you know the Eric Whitacre piece that everyone sings—Lux aurumque—he had this piece that he’d written, which was in English verse that he had translated into Latin. I wrote a text, and then a woman in the choir translated it into Latin for us. That one will be published in a little bit. It’s a cool thing to have somebody in your choir who can translate something into Latin for you.
JB: So she did an English text, and then Maryann Corbett did a Latin translation, and then I wrote a piece on the Latin, Surge inluminare, for choir and harp. The next step was that the publisher wanted an English translation—an English text that could be sung. So then they had to go back and recreate another thing, so it was like going around in a circle back to the English. It was interesting!
MB: We like to do a lot of different things: we both like to sing, to play, to conduct, to write, and I like to do the hymn texts. It keeps us from getting burned out. So right at the moment, I’m writing general things.

JR: What about your duets? You sometimes perform as a duo, is this just occasionally?
JB: Not so much recently.
MB: We used to do two-organ things, and we got a little tired of that, because we’d done all the repertoire multiple times.
JB: Two-organ repertoire, you just can’t take it on the road. Every situation is totally different. We did do a two-organ program in Milwaukee last year. That was fun, but there are limits to what you can do with that.
MB: The registration time is immense. It takes a good five or six hours just to register pieces, and then if you’re lucky you’ve got four or five hours the next day to work all the bugs out. It takes a lot of time. So we tend to play duets here, simply because it’s easier—it’s our instrument, we can register them over a period of a couple months, or whenever we feel like it. We’ve given up on the touring because it takes so long. If we were going to do something, we would have to allow three full days of just practicing. We can do it in two, but it’s hard.

JR: One last question—how do you keep a general balance in life, physical health along with everything else?
JB: I bike ride. It helps.
MB: I’ve been riding a couple times a week. And the Y’s right down the street.We walk a lot—walk and talk. In winter it’s hard to get out, because the wind is so bad and it’s hard to walk. That’s when we’re better about going to the Y. But we eat as healthfully as we can, so we try to do as much as we can. The mental health—I have no clue!
JB: Neither of us has ever figured out how to be well rounded!
MB: Well, we’re two perfectionists, and we tend to be very precise, and it’s not easy to work with that. Our choir does really well with it, but in an office situation that can be hard for people who aren’t as interested in getting details done.

JR: Do you have any other hobbies?
MB: I’m the parent organizer for our daughter’s swim team, so other than that, no, just exercise and eating right, and wine! And keeping up with our daughter. When she leaves, I don’t know what we’ll do. Internet stuff.

JR: Thank you!

July 20, 2004, Orwell, Vermont

Lorenz Maycher is organist-choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bethlehem, Pennnsylvania, teaches organ and piano at Lafayette College, and is assistant director of music at DeSales University. He has recently founded The Vermont Organ Academy, a website dedicated to promoting the organ and its music, located at <www.vermontorganacademy.com&gt;.

To the countless friends he has made in his
eight-decade-plus career in music, Thomas Richner is “Uncle T”--a uniquely
warm and gentle man who happens to be a world-famous pianist, organist,
educator and composer.

His cheerful optimism and sense of humor, coupled with
solid musicianship and dedication to his art, have inspired thousands of
students at Columbia and Rutgers, Colby College, and those who have heard him
wherever he has performed throughout the world. We have all learned so much
from him; his  recordings,
especially of Bach, Mozart and Chopin, are among my personal all-time
favorites.

In November 2005 he began his 95th year, cherished by
colleagues, friends, and pupils, and surrounded by Love. Happy Birthday, Uncle
T!

--Charles Callahan

Orwell, Vermont

LM: Tell me about your early years.

TR: I was born in a
little town in Pennsylvania called Point Marion, about 15 miles from Uniontown,
Pennsylvania, and 10 miles from Morgantown, West Virginia. Point Marion is
where the Cheat River and the Monongahela River come together, and that’s the
“point.” The main industry there is the Houze Convex Glass Company, where my
father was a glass blower. He told me, “I’m never going to let you do this kind
of work. It is not for you.” We agreed that I would do what was right for me,
and that is how I got into music.

My first piano teacher, dear Mrs. Conn, lived next door to
us. And, from a very early age I developed a great interest in understanding
what I was hearing, and loved to practice the piano when people weren’t around,
trying to perfect everything I was doing.

LM: How did you become interested in the organ?

TR: Well, in Point
Marion, we were members of the Christian church, which did not have an organ at
that time. There was just a piano, and I played it for church. When I was just
a kid, as all kids do, I went backstage, so to speak, and found this piece of
furniture that was all closed up. I opened the lid, and discovered it had two
keyboards and pedals--a pump organ. I started pumping the pedals and
playing, and derned if it didn’t work! I immediately became attached to it, and
thought the sound was just wonderful! I took Mama’s vacuum cleaner from home
and hooked it up to it to run it.

LM: How did you know to do that?

TR: Well, I knew it
had to have some kind of in-come, or out-go! (laughs)  And, frankly, I didn’t want to be the one doing all the
out-going--I didn’t know where I might land! (laughs) Anyhow, it worked. I
had an uncle who was a plumber, and we put the vacuum cleaner in the basement
and ran a line up to the organ. All I had to do was press a button to play
it--and this vacuum cleaner was downstairs running it!

LM: Did your mother encourage your music?

TR: Yes, she was
very much with me. And, my father was, too. I was an only child. My father
didn’t know a thing about music. But, my musical friends told him to go hear me
when I started playing here and there in public. He began to see what it meant
to me and he supported and encouraged it. He became very happy and it
brightened him greatly--it changed him. To this day I enjoy playing for
people and making them happy.

LM: Did being an only child have an effect on your music?

TR: Well, yes. I
realized at an early age that I was on my own, and that I’d have to make do. I
had to single things out in my own mind and seek those who could assist
me--people who, in turn, became dear friends. When I first went to
college, at the state college in Morgantown, I was surrounded by friends and
never felt they were measuring my every note. This gave me a great sense of
freedom, without having to worry about being 99% correct all the time.

I knew, though, that I had to get away and seek other
things. And, so, when I would play someplace, a person might come up and say,
“You know, you should really play here” or “You should really play there for
so-and-so. I’m sure there would be an opening there for you.” That sort of
thing got me all kinds of jobs, ending up with my becoming the organist at the
big Christian Science church in Boston, where I was for a number of years.

LM: But, you were in New York City first, weren’t you?

TR: Yes. I studied
piano there with Dora Zaslavsky. She had heard me play and accepted me into her
studio. Her husband was the artist John Koch. She was a dear sweet thing, and
her guidance saved me from not liking myself.

But, I had also developed a great love for the organ, and
learned how to play it by myself. I would sit down at an organ and say to
myself, “Oh, isn’t this incredible! What am I going to do?” Many people have
said, “You play by ear, don’t you?” Well, in a way, yes, I do. I must make
certain that what I do by ear is going to land on everybody’s ear, and they’re
going to decide whether what I do is any good or not.

Later on I became organist at Fifth Church of Christ,
Scientist in New York City, which is just half a block from Grand Central
Station, with Schirmer’s just around the corner. We were on the air, and people
listened to us from all over. Some people, of course, didn’t know the difference
between A-flat and A-sharp, but we were under the pressure of perfection.
Alfred Greenfield had been the organist there, and he was head of the music at
New York University. He was a dear person, and directed me in the right path,
saying, “You’re the one I want to have follow me.” When I succeeded him, and
told him I was uneasy and didn’t feel worthy, he said, “Always remember, it is
just one service at a time.” Isn’t that wonderful?

LM: Didn’t you tell me you used to run up to St.
Bartholomew’s after your service?

TR: Yes, to hear
David McK. What a wonderful musician and service player. He would do the most
incredible decrescendos. You could see his hand raised above the console, and
as he lowered it, the choir and organ would fade away into nothing. That’s what
I call the theater in music. Rather than stopping abruptly, he would just make
it disappear unnoticeably. I admired him very much. Everything was just right.
For instance, at the beginning of a service, he knew exactly what to play to
usher in what they were going to say. And, the end of his prelude would just
fade away so that the service could begin. It was just wonderful.

At Fifth Church in New York City we had a front organ, an
antiphonal and an echo organ. I used all three for the hymns, but at the end
played a tag, making the organ fade away into nothing. The echo was enclosed
within the antiphonal, which was also enclosed. It really speaks to the people
when you reduce, reduce and reduce. I learned this from David McK. Williams.
What a dear man he was.

LM: How do you deal with nerves before you have to play a
concert or big service?

TR: First of all, I
think of how the music should sound, without squeezing or pushing it. It is
important to know what you are doing is correct, and have your mind set on
this. It is important to love what you are playing, rather than think, “Oh, I
wonder if I can play this or not!” or, “Gee, I hope I can get this right!”
Sometimes there are obstacles to overcome, like talking going on, or a
not-so-good instrument. Well, that is why we have a mind, and why it is
important to have our music up there, rather than looking at our surroundings
for it.

When I played at First Church in Boston, we were on the air.
One of the greatest teachers I had was being able to come back after a service
and turn the machine on and listen to myself. And, I had a nice Aeolian-Skinner
at home that I used a lot for practicing. Lord have mercy! But, I’m so happy
that I worked at it, rather than just fiddling around “while Rome burns!”
(laughs) Excuse me, but I have this burning sensation! (much laughter)

LM: You are too much!

TR: You know
something? Never let your humor go. Do enjoy, have fun within yourself, and
have fun with people you enjoy. Do things absolutely, and not just halfway.

LM: You have a lot of freedom in your playing.

TR: That’s right.
Music is part of you. You can’t argue with it, and you can’t let yourself or
the music down. Rather than just going over and over and over something, which
isn’t much help, I make myself hear it mentally before I ever play it. One must
have a goal in mind. Another important thing is to have patience with oneself.
If you make a little boo-boo, it’s not going to make that big a difference. It
is important, though, to not ever play something without first practicing and
listening to it. We must be our own critics.

LM: What do you listen for when you practice?

TR: First of all,
tempo. Second, every single note has a meaning. You have to have an
understanding of why each note has meaning. This makes you a part of it. You’re
not reaching out there for something. You’re it! It all has to be within you.

LM: And you play a lot of Mozart.

TR: Well, I have
small hands, so they are well-suited for Mozart. We are close friends! He
helped me win the Naumberg Award, which got me a recital at Town Hall.

LM: What do you think his true personality was? Could it
really have been like he was portrayed in “Amadeus?”

TR: In no way, shape
or form. He was a born musician, and a serious man.

LM: Did you enjoy working with soloists at Fifth Church
and The Mother Church?

TR: Oh, yes. We were
like family. We got to the point that we understood each other so well,
musically, that we always knew what the other was going to do. We rehearsed
everything one week in advance, and recorded our rehearsals so we could come
back prepared for the actual service.

LM: You also taught piano and organ at Rutgers and
Columbia.

TR: Yes, and that
was a wonderful experience. My colleagues were very dear and supporting, and I
loved teaching.

LM: Did you know Searle Wright?

TR: Yes. He was very
quiet and gentle, and never tried to act like a big shot. That means so
much--to understand who you are without being arrogant (which is what
Christian Scientists call “mortal mind”).

LM: How do you approach teaching?

TR: Every student is
different. You have to find out where they are and find something that is
within their reach. Each person has something to give, and that’s what I stress
to each student--he is a giver of the music. But, each gift has to come
from above first. Then it goes to you and it is your duty to love it and
yourself and then give it away to your audience with ease. And, remember, your
audience, whether it be in concert or at church, is with you every step of the
way. The only way to get something over to them, though, is to love it and
enjoy it yourself first. And, remember what you are doing is benefiting
mankind, and not just one person. It’s not a case of being selfish, but one of
giving. 

You’re looking at an old-timer! I was born November 5, 1911.
And, I’ve learned that you get back what you give. You make your own future. If
you give with tender loving care, people feel it.

LM: Do you practice much these days?

TR: I practice
enough to keep myself going so that I don’t feel left out in the open. If
somebody asks me to play, I can still say, “Sure.”

LM: Do you feel organists should have a piano background?

TR: Absolutely. It
breaks the music down note for note, so that you have a clear understanding of
melodic line, harmonic structure, counter melodies, etc., instead of just
fiddling with stops or mechanical things.

LM: Do you have a motto in life?

TR: No.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  But, I feel we should do the best we
can in our giving. Don’t just play around, but play well, prepare, and give it
away. It gives you such a wonderful feeling. And, I’m a big fan of that word
“L-O-V-E.” Love what you are doing, love your friends, love every note you are
playing.

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of The Diapason.

Paul Jacobs is no stranger to anyone who knows the organ world, and of late he is gaining exposure to a broader audience through the mass media. The subject of numerous newspaper, professional journal, and public radio interviews (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Choir and Organ, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, to name just a few), Jacobs is a musician of passionate and devoted intensity. One of the first mentions of him in these pages was as the college division prize winner of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition (see The Diapason, November 1998); his Messiaen Marathon performance in Chicago was chronicled by Frank Ferko in The Diapason in May 2002, and his numerous achievements and honors have often been reported here. Jacobs’ current high media profile is due in part to his position as head of the organ department at Juilliard—at age 26 he became the school’s youngest department chair ever. He has also garnered attention for his Bach and Messiaen marathons, though these certainly are serious and concentrated encounters with the music of these composers and not to be considered stunts.
A native of Washington, Pennsylvania, Paul Jacobs studied organ with George Rau, John Weaver, and Thomas Murray. His teachers attest to his intelligence, great capacity for learning, and hardy work ethic; these were noticeable even as he began his organ studies. George Rau, Jacobs’ first organ teacher, remembers that even at his first lesson, his talent was obvious; he learned very quickly, and worked very hard.
I knew that his was an extraordinary talent, and also not only that, he works harder than any musician that I know; and having the two—not only this great talent, but also this great work ethic—really, you just knew that he was going to go far.1
By age 15—when he took his first church position—he had learned much of the standard repertoire and was working on larger Bach works. Jacobs studied with John Weaver at the Curtis Institute of Music; Weaver’s first impression noted the “security of his playing and the musicianship.” Weaver also commented that

Certainly one of his strengths was a great seriousness, which is still a hallmark of his playing, and of his personality. He really is deeply devoted to excellence in performance. What did he need to work on? Well, he was not at the top of his form in the social graces. Not that he was inappropriate, but I think he was a little nervous about conversing with people; and interacting with people was a skill that he had not developed terribly well at that point, but that he now has more than compensated for.2
At Rau’s suggestion, Jacobs began mastering early on the skill of memorization.

I would always tell him that it’s a skill that if developed now, you’ll have it for the rest of your life, and it’s a skill that you want to develop young, so that it becomes a natural part of your playing.3

Rau’s nudging to memorize was taken to heart; John Weaver elaborates:

The tradition at the Curtis Institute that goes back to the days of Lynwood Farnam and was maintained for many years by Alexander McCurdy, and I inherited and maintained, [was] that each student shall play a new piece from memory in organ class each week. And nothing like this exists any place else in the world, as far as I know. Paul wasn’t fazed by this at all. But after he’d been at Curtis, oh, perhaps six weeks or so into his first year, he came to me and said, “well, would it be all right”—he was very timid about this—“do you think it would matter, would people be upset, would it be all right if I were to play TWO pieces each week?” (laughter) And so I thought that would be just fine, and told him so, and so he did. From that time on, for the rest of his four years at Curtis, he played at least one new piece each week, plus another piece and sometimes repeating a piece from another time. Well the interesting thing is, it wasn’t very many weeks after that, one of his fellow students who’d become equally notorious in the organ world, Ken Cowan, wasn’t about to be upstaged. He started memorizing two pieces each week too! (laughter) It was quite a class—to have Paul Jacobs and Ken Cowan both studying at the same time.4

Following Curtis, Jacobs went on to study at Yale. His teacher at Yale, Thomas Murray, found Jacobs to be “a genuinely modest and seriously committed artist.” 5

Perhaps the greatest strength a musician can have is to be truly individual, and that surely describes Paul and the way he approaches everything. He identifies the music of specific composers as being the most enduring and ennobling, and then devotes himself to that music without reservation. In Paul’s case, that has meant Bach and Messiaen especially. By the time he left Yale with his Artist Diploma and Master of Music degree in 2003, he was adding Brahms and Reger to his agenda. With this as his core repertoire, he is fastidious about what he adds for “lighter music.” He knows how to popularize the organ in other ways. In fact, he was a very effective “pied piper” while at Yale, intentionally drawing large numbers of undergraduates and non-concert-going people to his programs. Much of that he does with a personal, one-to-one, friendly rapport. When he played his E. Power Biggs Memorial Recital at Harvard, for example, he calmly greeted members of the audience as they arrived! So in large measure, his approach has not been on the well-trod path of competitions or with showy music.6

Phillip Truckenbrod, whose agency manages Jacobs’ engagements, first heard of Paul Jacobs via his playing at an AGO convention and subsequently when Jacobs won the college division award of the Albert Schweitzer competition. Truckenbrod has mentioned how Jacobs has been noticed by the broader musical community, remarking that

A lot of the kudos which have come his way are not from organ sources, they’re from critics who don’t usually do much with organ, and people who have simply recognized a real talent—a talent comparable to some of the best talents in other fields of classical music. Resonating is one of the favorite words today—but he’s sort of resonating on that level.7

We wished to discover for ourselves a bit of what makes this fervent musician tick, and also to explore some of his views on the role of the organ and its music in the face of the popular culture juggernaut that challenges us all.

JR: In your very full life you have teaching at Juilliard, and recitals to play, which involve a good deal of travel. How do you balance these many demands?
PJ: I look to the life of George Frederick Handel for inspiration. Handel was not a man of leisure—he was very much married to his art. There are not enough hours in the day, and I feel obligated to my work, which is so fulfilling. Actually this ties in with my not owning a television, too. Who has the time? While I’m home visiting my mother and family in Pennsylvania, of course I do occasionally watch television. And you know, the more stations there are, the less that’s worthwhile. I actually have encouraged people to get rid of their television and get out there and live. Live deliberately!

JR: I’ve read that you first heard organ music when you were young, at church—a nun was playing and it inspired you. Prior to that, were you already listening to serious music? What sort of family culture do you come from?
PJ: Surprisingly, I do not come from a musical family, nor from a musical community, for that matter. As you know, I’m from Washington, Pennsylvania. My father is deceased; my mother is a nurse, and, while not musical herself, she did all that she could to support my fascination with music. She recognized early on that I possessed a very strong attraction to music. Even when I was three, she noticed that I would listen to classical music, or if there was a conductor on television, an orchestra concert, I was entranced. And I expressed interest at age five to study the piano. All of that led way to more serious study of music.

JR: And you began piano study when you were about six?
PJ: Yes, at six, and continued that through my first year at Curtis. Thirteen was when I began playing the organ. And I was fortunate in a relatively small town to have both a first-rate piano teacher and an organ teacher who nurtured my zeal for music and my musical education.

JR: Is that how your practice habits got a good start?
PJ: Yes, I would say so. For a young person to have strong feelings for classical music in the United States is generally not held in high regard by the young person’s peers.

JR: Indeed! I take it that you were not on three or four sports teams?
PJ: Not only that—I’m as unathletic as one could be. But you know, I didn’t really have any friends, growing up. I had difficulty, even through most of my time at Curtis, because I was an intense introvert. I’ve lightened my personality a bit over the last several years. And I don’t regret any of this, by the way—but I had no time for taking part in the banalities of life; and partying, or drinking, or just idle talk—it was of no interest to me. I would much prefer to be playing and studying beautiful music. Friday nights, even through Curtis, were spent practicing, late into the night, not out with friends. One has to become the music. You have to want it to become part of you, you have to go through an incredibly intense, rigorous lifestyle to get to this point, to earn the right to confidently express yourself.

JR: That’s a very interesting idea—that as an introvert you would bypass social opportunities, so that you could dig in deeper and express yourself publicly through music.
PJ: Oh, I think that’s absolutely the case. I think keyboardists tend to lead the most insular existences—pianists, organists, because our instruments are so complete. But the nature of being a serious musician demands a lifestyle that is centered around not only musical analysis but also self-analysis, and self-reflection—all of these things are intertwined. If one is to have a love affair, shall we say, with music, one must become as intimate with it as possible, and that demands many hours of the day—hours that could be spent doing other things with other people. I suppose it’s an abstract point, but it’s a very important point—musicians need that solitude. My solitude has always been very important to me, because it has allowed me to become very close with the art. It’s not necessarily loneliness—it can be, at times, but solitude doesn’t necessarily equal loneliness.

JR: Yes—alone is not equal to lonely. But I think of you as quite gracious. At the 2004 AGO convention you were at the door greeting people as they entered the church for your recital. That seemed very open and confident, not what I would associate with someone who was an introvert.
PJ: Yes, I feel genuinely obliged to thank people and to be gracious to them because they’re giving of themselves. Good musicians want to become vulnerable to an audience. You get out there and pour your heart and soul out, and you hope an audience will do the same: that they will allow the barriers to come down—emotional barriers, spiritual barriers, intellectual barriers, and just be there in the moment. It has to be this mutual vulnerability; everyone must be very giving and human and sensitive to what’s going on. So it’s important that the performer be approachable and not aloof. Again, I don’t think I’m contradicting myself. One can still have the solitude and not be aloof—you can still relate to people.

JR: Yes! Do you routinely greet people before a performance?
PJ: It varies, depending on how I feel. I like to, but not always. Quite frankly, oftentimes I like to take a walk—depending on where the venue is. One time, last season, the church was located in a wonderful neighborhood—it was very scenic. And I wanted to take a walk about an hour before. And—I got lost! I didn’t get back into the church until about two minutes before the concert. People were concerned!

JR: During your training years, what would be a typical amount of practice in a given day? I know you emphasize not merely the quantity but also the quality of it, but quantity needs to be there too.
PJ: Sure, absolutely, it does, and that’s an important point—you do have to have the quantity as well. I would like to get in between six to eight hours a day if I could.

JR: And I would imagine now that’s not as possible as it used to be?
PJ: It sometimes is not, that’s right, especially during the school year. However, this relates to organists, because we as organists often have to wear many hats—I should say those of us who are church musicians. One sometimes has to work with choirs, prepare music, and be an administrator, all of these sorts of things—and practice is neglected. And practice needs to be a crucial part. I might even say that practice needs to be THE crucial part of an artist’s life—a significant priority—every day, just as eating, sleeping, breathing.

JR: Prior to Curtis, were you musically active in your church or at that point were you focused on being an organist? Were you in your church choir?
PJ: Well, I actually became the organist of my home church when I was 15, and that was a very large church. The position was quite demanding; I had to play for six Masses a weekend, over 60 weddings a year—this was a parish of over 3500 families. And I had to accompany the choir; I was not the choir director, but I was there for all choir rehearsals, interacting with people much older than I was. But I loved it! I was in my element.

JR: Did you also have a church job in New York?
PJ: I did. And I still do. I was organist and choirmaster at Christ and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church for two years; however, I became artist in residence beginning in the fall, mainly because I’m seldom there due to my performance schedule. I’m very fond of the people there, though, and I very much enjoy playing for services; it just is something I’m unable to do regularly. Being artist in residence and playing a few times a year seems to work well.

JR: You have done Bach and Messiaen marathons. What made you want to play their entire works for organ?
PJ: I see Bach and Messiaen as perhaps two incomparable composers for the organ. They also happen to be perhaps two of the most overtly religious composers in Western history, if you think about it. That has always been an enormous source of stimulation, and that element alone has attracted me to their music. Then on a purely compositional level they are two of the greatest composers to have lived—every note of Bach and Messiaen is in its proper place. They never waste a note; it’s music that is perfectly crafted. It is music that is as close to God as we could possibly experience in this life, and I wanted to become intimate with as much of it as I could—and that meant the entire canons of these composers.

JR: You have said that you like to just enjoy nature. That makes me think of Messiaen—what an amazing mind there, so far-reaching: Greek music, Indian modes, birdsong, other sounds in nature, that play into his concept of music. Do you incorporate any of this into your approach to Messiaen’s music?

PJ: Very much! Messiaen had the soul of a poet, there’s no question about that. And we as musicians need to have this insatiable desire, to be drawn to beauty. It’s not enough to sit down and play the organ well—and then go about life. Playing music should be an end in itself, not a means to an end. When I sit at the organ and play the Book of the Blessed Sacrament of Messiaen, the Livre du Saint Sacrement, it’s the end of the world, in the most glorious sense. One forgets about time, one forgets about all of these things—and there’s a purity of nature, a reality. As much as I adore the culture of the city, it’s artificial, on one level, because it’s all man-made. But nature is made directly by God.
You know, I did recently take one day off to go to Valley Forge Park, which I adore, and just walk and hike up the mountains and through the fields and into the woods. And it was balmy and humid and hot and quite cloudy as well. About halfway along my walk, the heavens opened up, and it started to pour. I didn’t have an umbrella, and I got soaked; but it wasn’t long before I realized that this is something to relish! It wasn’t a thunderstorm, I wasn’t in any danger of being struck by lightning; but just being showered upon, it was actually very wonderful; it was a beautiful experience. I always have a deep yearning to spend time in nature; that never ends.
Recently I was in Australia. I encountered some glorious birds and birdsong—in particular, on one SPECTACULAR occasion, I confronted a lyre-bird. My first introduction to the lyre-bird was through Messiaen’s symphonic work, Illuminations of the Beyond, the Éclairs sur l’au-delà. It’s the third movement that’s called “The Superb Lyre-Bird.” I was taking a walk with two of my hosts in a wooded area outside of Sydney; to encounter this lyre-bird, that inspired Messiaen, was an immensely moving experience.

JR: What are you working on now in terms of adding to your repertoire? What would you like to focus on in the future?
PJ: Even though I haven’t programmed much German Romantic repertoire—Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann—in the last few months, it’s music of the highest quality. I have become quite attracted to Reger’s music. I think that it is sorely underestimated, because it is difficult, not only for the player, but sometimes for the audience, and even music historians. It’s difficult to comprehend technically and musically, and it’s often played in a heavy-handed way that can make it unattractive, and this need not be the case.
I have broad interests in music—I play contemporary art music. I do have an interest in 20th-century music, not just with Messiaen, but also Hindemith, Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and others. It is also important to support the creative spirit of contemporary times and I intend to commission works from several modern composers. I also delight in music earlier than Bach—Buxtehude, Couperin, De Grigny—exquisite music! I rejoice in playing the whole canon of the organ repertory. I would never want to be labeled a specialist; my interests are too extensive for that. I savor the ability to play a vast array of music.

JR: Do you read about the composers whose music you play? What do you do besides study scores?
PJ: Absolutely. Attempting to understand the personality behind the music is fascinating and illuminating. You want to understand everything you can about what you’re pursuing, not just sit down and crank out notes.

JR: Yes, and if you can understand the person and their time, it really helps shed light on the music, or the music shed light on the time.
PJ: That’s right! And not necessarily in a stylistic sense, although it can sometimes. I’m revisiting some older repertoire now, and I think I’m going to program some Franck this season or next. One of the first pieces I learned was the Prelude, Fugue and Variation—it’s a gorgeous work. And I might do some different things; I’m conceiving of the piece in a different way, perhaps with some different articulations, colors and sounds. If one were playing a Cavaillé-Coll, one could follow exactly what Franck indicated, and it’s wonderful. But there’s nothing wrong, too, with developing a different, even unorthodox concept of a piece, as long as the playing is expressive and compelling. That’s really the ultimate goal—it’s not about right and wrong, or what one should or shouldn’t do. Rule No. 1 is to MOVE the listener, and if the subsequent rules need to be broken to serve this first rule, so be it.

JR: How do you prepare a piece? Do you have any specific practice techniques? Transferring your knowledge of how to play on one instrument to another, in a very short span of time—is there anything specific you do?
PJ: Well, one needs to sleep with the score. That is to say, you need to study it away from the keyboard. Know it inside and out—live with the music. Understand what the music means on spiritual levels, philosophical levels, aesthetic levels—one needs to be able to look at music in so many ways. I do a lot of work at the piano, particularly much of the preliminary work—phrasing, or learning notes, things such as that. And sometimes one can discover new ideas about how to interpret a piece on a different instrument, then transfer those concepts to the other instrument. And one isn’t distracted, too, by all of the gadgets on the organ. When sitting at a piano or harpsichord, any instrument is sparse compared to the pipe organ. I think it is easier to focus with the piano or the harpsichord than it is with the organ, because there’s so much to consider: not only notes, but also registration, and all the other technical and mechanical aspects.

JR: But at some point, the organ’s gadgets will require your attention. How do you memorize registrational changes on an unfamiliar instrument, when you have very little time? How do you remember that on this instrument “I need to hit the Great to Pedal toe stud” and on the next instrument there is none? How do you remember all the mechanics, since you don’t use a registrant?
PJ: Well, that’s a bit of an enigma to me. Obviously, I become familiar with the instrument before the concert—then I associate the sound with my muscles—I don’t really know!
It MIGHT BE a little bit psychological, particularly if you can memorize notes. I find that students can usually do far more than they think they can. There are teachers who unintentionally beat students down, even intimidate, and have them frightened to take risks or challenges, or be creative, but I try to pull out the potential of students. Nothing is more rewarding than when they’re surprised about what they CAN do—for instance, memorization. I have some students who say, “Oh, I just can’t memorize,” and some students that it comes easy to. Well, there are ways to work at this—there aren’t short cuts, it’s difficult—but there are ways that one can improve.

JR: I remember being told that you have to practice the button-pushing as much as the key-pressing.
PJ: I focus with students on playing the organ beautifully. Not only the music, but the instrument, the console. You watch pianists or violinists—the grace with which they play! And many organists sit up there looking rather rigid and stiff. Particularly with consoles that are more visible these days, we have to physically be confident when we play. We don’t want to be overwhelmed by the organ, we want to be in perfect alignment with it. And you’re right—the idea of practicing pushing pistons, and pushing them at the right time—these technical things have to be practiced. But when you actually play them, you want the timing to be musical. You want to push them gracefully. All of these things have to serve the music; they can’t just be technical exercises.

JR: You spoke of people who are stiff sitting at the organ. Have you ever had a problem with muscle tension?
PJ: Well, I haven’t, other than maybe practicing. When one does a lot of practicing, fatigue can set in, muscles can become a little sore. There are organists who think that you have to sit completely still, that you have to be able to balance a glass of milk on your hand, you don’t want any unnecessary movements. Well, some people are naturally quieter at the console, and some people are a little freer, they move more. And that’s ok! You have to do what is comfortable.
Certainly with beginners you have to be very careful about extraneous motion and movement. At a more advanced stage, you develop your own musical personality, and your physical personality when you’re playing, and it’s ok to move. Just move the body! Just as long as you’re relaxed. And if being relaxed means being still, so be it. If it means moving, that’s fine too. But there are many organists that sit almost as if they’re frightened to move, they’re intimidated by pushing buttons, making sure everything’s right on. If you don’t revel in what you’re doing, if the technical demands of playing the organ are overwhelming you, you won’t enjoy it. And you need to enjoy! It seems so obvious and logical—you need to not only musically and mentally enjoy the music, but you need to physically enjoy the music while you’re playing. There’s nothing wrong with that.

JR: Our culture trivializes music—for the most part, it’s considered background noise, playing while one does something else. People prefer music that is short, simply constructed, and any melody must be very simple and accessible. Given this, how can we as organists reach people? Schools are eliminating music instruction; serious organ music is scarcer in churches—there are a lot of organists who can’t play it, or won’t; and fewer people are going to church. So the opportunities for exposure to things like Bach and Messiaen are fewer and fewer. How do we react to that? What can we do?
PJ: Anyone who says that he or she cares about music or values it has an obligation to take action. And what I have found is that many people do acknowledge these problems—at least those of us who play music and listen to music. So what is the next step? I see most of popular culture as extremely corrosive to what we try to accomplish as musicians. And I think we organists first need to put ourselves in a larger context, and start thinking in broader terms. I do find that our profession is far too isolated. We organists need to get out of the loft and listen to operas, listen to chamber music, go to hear the symphony—we need music, in all of its manifestations. It is, however, possible to really like music and to be intrigued by it at a high level, without being passionate about it. Those of us who are passionate about music need to challenge those who are merely intrigued by it, to make them even more sensitive. This is what we have to do: build an army of individuals who possess an unwavering commitment to the creation of a musically literate society.
Popular culture is extremely destructive to beauty because it serves the opposite purpose of what true music and art serve—and that is, it numbs us. Because music is in the background and not the foreground, one is not expected to listen to it with this full spirit, being, mind—whatever term you wish to use. And that essentially desensitizes. Art music is supposed to make one more sensitive to beauty and life. That is to say, we learn how to listen carefully and deliberately—for there are so many alluring details in the music that desire our full undivided attention.

JR: If we say we care, then we have an obligation to take action.
PJ: And that is to say, to challenge the culture. I see my obligation as an artist—I should say, one facet—is to challenge aggressively this corrosive popular culture. What does that mean? Write letters to newspapers and other organizations, make noise about what you do. If you care, do you care enough to share what you profess to care about? Do you want to share it with someone else? If we value something, and we see the good in something, isn’t it logical to want to share it? I’ve become dismayed because I see quite clearly the enormous potential of a society which truly values music—the potential is there, and we see it on an individual level; we see what happens when a young person discovers the power of music in a very real and profound way. It’s something to celebrate. I have NO faith in the popular culture, but I have boundless faith at the individual level. I think that keeps me going, keeps me inspired, and wanting to continue living.

JR: Well, all right. If an audience member heard a serious program, and wasn’t used to that, how would you respond if they said they wanted to hear something that was easier to listen to?
PJ: Well, I would have a conversation with that person, first of all. I would be very patient initially. If the person said “I don’t understand that,” or “I don’t appreciate that,” that’s a fair statement, and it’s not making a judgment. It’s even fair to say “I don’t care for that.” But judging something that you don’t understand isn’t fair, and I guess I would attempt to help the person see this.
I remember having an interview for NPR’s Morning Edition, last year before my Messiaen program. And it was very clear to me that the person who interviewed me did very little preparation for the interview. I think she knew practically nothing about the organ, knew even less about the composer. And she said to me, “There are those who don’t like the organ. I’m wondering what you might say to that.” And my feeling was, you know, we live in a culture that sits back and says, “Prove to me that this is worthwhile”—that X is worthwhile, or that this has value, or that I should do this. Prove to me, show me—and they don’t take any initiative. And my feeling is, pick up a book yourself and read. Or take an organ or piano lesson. YOU have to take some initiative. You’re right, we’re so used to diluting everything these days. I find it troubling that many organists don’t seem to possess this zeal, this call to action. They possess it at some level, there’s some awareness of it, but it doesn’t determine their behavior, or their actions, or their everyday conversations with people, I don’t know how else to say it. There’s no fire in the belly—there has to be.

JR: You mentioned that we organists need to get out and listen to other musical forms, such as the symphony. What other music do you listen to?
PJ: We could be here all night! I will say quite clearly, I do not listen to popular entertainment. I have no interest in that sort of thing. I see that as corrosive, and as an artist and a musician, I feel obligated to challenge what our culture accepts as music. What do I listen to? I listen to six centuries of music—from plainchant and Ockeghem through Dallapiccola and Debussy. Recently, I’ve been listening a great deal to Mozart, perhaps more than I ever have in my life—specifically to the piano concerti and the sonatas. This summer I’ve rediscovered this music—specifically Ashkenazy playing the piano concerti, DeLarrocha the sonatas. And I’m very fond of the great Romantic repertoire—Mahler’s symphonies, Verdi’s operas, and Brahms’s chamber music. In the twentieth century, I find Alban Berg’s music quite voluptuous. But yes, I have very broad tastes, with the exception that I’m not fond of most popular music. I maintain that Western art music is the pinnacle. But of course, that would be challenged by more and more people today.

JR: During your time at Yale and at Curtis, what were you able to learn? I have the feeling that you were already technically skilled by the time you got to Curtis, so you didn’t need to work on technique. Is that correct?
PJ: No, not really. Certainly I would consider registration part of technique. That was something that I learned a great deal from both John Weaver and Thomas Murray—with regards to console control, and how to bring out the best from an instrument. Both John Weaver and Thomas Murray allowed me to be my own musical voice; they didn’t try to impose their own style upon me. And that is something that I have taken from them, and applied to my own style of teaching. I’m very grateful to both of them.

JR: How are you enjoying teaching at Juilliard?
PJ: Very much. And I should add that with the current situations of schools—such as Northwestern and of course the New England Conservatory—the situation at Juilliard could not be any better. The president of Juilliard, Joseph Polisi, has been extremely supportive of my vision for the department. And the talent that exists in the department is formidable. During a visit last year to organ class, Michael Barone referred to the department as a “hot shop!”

JR: You have indicated that the department would not really be growing in numbers, that it would be limited to a certain size. Is that correct?
PJ: It fits in with the school, because the school itself is small. Juilliard prides itself on being a small school, and our department is the size of some of the wind departments—flute, oboe—relatively similar in size. Ten organ majors is generally a good number for the Juilliard community. It could be bumped up a little, I suppose, and it might be, but not much.

JR: Do you find any difference either in outlook or ability or approaches between your students and those that you work with in master classes?
PJ: With master classes, one can be all over the map; there’s such variety. One thing that I insist on with each of my students is that they develop their own musical signature, right from the start. We don’t want any clones in the department—and there are none. I think if one visits the school and hears the department play, one will encounter rich variety and imagination in playing and in styles. And I encourage this—I insist upon it. I believe that a teacher at Juilliard needs to be quite demanding with the students, but the students are highly motivated and always rise to the occasion. I’m very proud of them.

JR: Do you have any big projects planned? Any more marathons, any more things of that nature?
PJ: I performed the Messiaen cycle again in Los Angeles, at the end of October, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels. But with regards to something different, I look forward to pursuing new repertoire. Actually I am considering offering a Reger marathon, a Reger cycle—but not in the immediate future!

JR: Will you be making any more recordings?
PJ: Oh, yes, yes! I’ve neglected recording, simply because of other projects and such. But I am very keen on recording Messiaen and Reger in the near future.
I want to concentrate on other things right now, these being performing and certainly learning other repertoire. The snowball keeps growing larger, but I love it. This work provides such joy and fulfillment in my life, and meaning.

JR: Well, Paul, I will let you go get a cup of tea! Thank you so much for your time.
PJ: It’s been a pleasure talking with you.

Notes 1. Frank Rippl, “OHS 52nd National Convention, July 11–17, 2007, Central Indiana,” The Diapason, February 2008, vol. 99, no. 2, pp. 24–29.

Since the beginning of this century, the recital calendar of The Diapason has included numerous listings for Ken Cowan. A native of Thorold, Ontario, Canada, Cowan was first taught organ by his father, David Cowan; he subsequently studied with James Bigham, with John Weaver at the Curtis Institute of Music, and with Thomas Murray at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He has held organist positions at St. Bartholomew’s, St. James Episcopal Church, and the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City, and St. Clement’s Church in Philadelphia; during his college years he was on the roster of associate organists for the Wanamaker Grand Court organ in Philadelphia. He presently serves as Assistant Professor of Organ at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey; Rider University has honored him with the 2008 Distinguished Teaching Award.
A featured artist at the 2004 AGO convention in Los Angeles and during the 2008 AGO convention in Minneapolis (as one of several players during a concert recorded for Pipedreams), Ken Cowan has also performed at many AGO regional conventions, as well as at conventions of the Organ Historical Society and the Royal Canadian College of Organists. His discography comprises numerous recordings (for the JAV label) on Skinner instruments, including The Art of the Symphonic Organist, recorded on the 1921 Skinner organ at the Parish Church of St. Luke, Evanston, Illinois. (Note: John Speller’s review of this recording in The Diapason praised Cowan’s choice of repertoire, demonstration of the organ’s colors, and skill with buildup and decrescendo, calling the disc “one of the finest I have heard in some time.” See The Diapason, August 2004, p. 14.) With Justin Bischof, he recorded Aaron David Miller’s Double Concerto for organ with the Zurich Symphony Orchestra, on the Kleuker organ in the Tonhalle in Zurich (Ethereal Recordings). Cowan’s repertoire is broad, but favors nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers, from Bossi to Liszt, Wagner to Widor, Dupré to Roger-Ducasse, and much in between. He is associated with transcriptions, yet these do not dominate either his recital programs or his recordings. As a performer he seems relaxed, taking any difficulties in stride. Ken Cowan is represented by Karen McFarlane Artists.

JR: Let’s talk about your DNA! Your father is an organist, and other grandparents were too, correct?
KC: Yes, two grandmothers and great-grandmother Cowan. Thurza Cowan was an organist, and I think she must have been pretty good too, because the repertoire that is still sitting around my house in Canada shows she played some really difficult things.

JR: Were those the days when you had to have a pumper?
KC: A little bit after that, I think it was. She played a Woodstock organ. I saw a picture of the old console, and it looks like a theatre organ console. But it would have been electrified, I think.

JR: And your grandmothers?
KC: My father’s mother and my mother’s mother both played, each as a local parish organist.

JR: Did your grandmother teach your father?
KC: No, actually; that’s not our family’s habit. My father studied with a local organist named George Hannahson, actually a very good player; the brothers Hannahson did a lot of the church music in the area. Except for the things that my dad showed me to get me started at the organ, I think everybody in my family who learned an instrument always studied with somebody outside the family.

JR: Were your first lessons with your father?
KC: He got me started with the instrument. He didn’t teach me piano, so we always had it in mind that I would eventually find an organ teacher outside of our house.

JR: Did you insist on organ lessons, or did he suggest you should take them?
KC: No, it was me. He insisted that I study the maximum amount of piano possible before I ever touched the organ. Ever since I was three years old, I would hang around the organ bench, and I knew what all the stops were. I knew the difference between a Lieblich flute and a Rohr flute when I was little—before I could play anything. And I was the token key-holder in the family—if the reeds needed to be tuned, I would be carted down to the church. The arrangement was that if I was well-behaved in church, he would play whatever my favorite organ tunes were before we would go home. I still remember that.

JR: So what were your favorite organ pieces when you were a wee lad?
KC: They were a little different from what they are now! (laughter) Probably mostly little songs that I knew how to sing at the time. Or wedding pieces and old campy hymns, I used to like those too—and I knew all the words. Somewhere I have a tape of myself singing along, I think—locked away! Anyway, I was fortunate that there was a really nice Casavant organ from the ’20s in the church where my father played, a three-manual organ, so it was great just to get to know registration on a nice instrument first. And we always had a lousy piano—which is still there, actually! So to have this really nice organ—I couldn’t resist but to learn how to play it—or try.

JR: How old were you when you started playing the organ?
KC: I knew how to play a hymn on the organ, but I really started to learn pieces around eighth grade, so twelve or thirteen. I knew how to play the piano pretty well by then. In fact, I got a lot more interested in piano after I realized how much I really liked playing the organ. I learned about some organ pieces that had been arranged for piano—I remember one was the Liszt B-A-C-H—I guess if you don’t realize that it’s a hard piece
. . . . So I improved a lot as a pianist after I decided I wanted to try to become as good an organist as I possibly could, and realized at that time, too, that piano was the key, at least for a lot of it. A couple years after that, studying some Bach and other things, I heard music of Dupré for the first time. So I went along for a while just learning all the pieces that made me think “oh, that’s a really neat piece!” It wasn’t the most logical progression, but it worked out all right.

JR: What was your first recital like?
KC: First recitals on the organ—I was 13 or 14. At that time it was mostly playing the Widor Toccata, the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor—I used to work on lots of Bach pieces when I was in high school, so I always programmed that. I could practice the same pieces quite a lot, unlike now where there are piles and piles of things to get through in a short amount of time. But at least when I began performing I was confident that “I’ve been playing this Bach piece for a few months, it’ll probably be all right.”

JR: What was your first church position?
KC: I was sort of the perpetual assistant organist! I worked that way alongside my dad for the last year or so of high school, so I guess outside of any kind of familial supervision was when I went to college. I was assistant at St. Clement’s Church—and that was being thrown into the deep end of the pool, because Peter Conte was the organist at that time and of course ran a pretty tight ship, and still does there. I stayed at St. Clement’s the whole time I was in college in Philadelphia, and worked for a couple years at St. Mary the Virgin, and then at St. James Madison Avenue, and then at St. Bartholomew’s.

JR: You had said that when you were first studying, you weren’t sure about a career. At what point did you know that this was going to be your life’s work?
KC: I think that when I went away to college I knew pretty well that music was going to be what I would do primarily. And I never had any doubt that certainly I’d always be involved in music in my life. But I guess I was brought up in a casual enough way that no one ever said “You must be a musician.” And there are plenty of other interesting things out there to do! So it was by the time I went away to Curtis for college. I was fortunate that they were willing to take me in, and it was a great experience. I’ve been fortunate, in every place and with everyone with whom I’ve studied—I really made some lucky choices.

JR: At this point, could you identify who your big influences are?
KC: I think now it’s sort of a conglomeration. But there’s no one that I’ve ever studied with who hasn’t been an influence, and recordings are very valuable too. I remember when I was in high school—even though it wasn’t a complete immersion in music like college, I remember clearly what I learned from James Bigham, who was my teacher at that time—a major influence and a masterful player and teacher. At Curtis, of course, I was studying with John Weaver, and he had a different approach to teaching and was demanding about what was to be expected week to week.
My experience at Curtis was great. I still remember bringing in—I think it was my second year there—the Liszt Ad nos, and I was trying to be conservative, in the sense of not using countless general pistons. At that time the organ at Curtis Hall had just twelve general pistons, so I learned it using only one level, and I thought, “well, that’s a bit of restraint here”—a mere twelve generals, with lots of divisionals. I finished playing through it, and we talked about the music, and John Weaver said, “Now, I just should tell you, that when you’re approaching the registration of a piece like this, you can’t always count on having a dozen general pistons. I just bet that through use of more divisional pistons, I could work out all the registrations for this piece with no compromise whatsoever, on six general pistons.” And the amazing thing is—that he could! He was really impressive in that way, because, having decades of touring experience, he’s mindful that there weren’t always multiple memory levels. So he was very encouraging about people not being a slave to a computer combination action. For example, if you hit a piston for a chorale prelude registration that had a flute here and a cornet there, you’d be asked—“Can’t you remember these stops? Why do you have to hit a piston?”
Then of course, Thomas Murray is sort of a wonder in his own way. I enjoy just watching him at an organ—how he approaches the instrument, how to choose registrations—musically and registrationally always doing the most with the least, and loving every minute of it. I think a lot of people associate him with “oh, and he hits 500 Swell pistons.” Actually he doesn’t; he uses the fewest number to get the greatest effect. I didn’t realize that until really watching.
Martin Jean began teaching at Yale the same year I began studying there, and he was a really interesting person to study with as well. I had lessons with him for a semester at Yale while Tom Murray was on sabbatical; in addition to a coaching here or there at other times, students in the Yale department were free to coach with faculty outside of their own studio. Martin was full of curiosity about compositions and their possible interpretations, so I would always leave lessons with him pondering many possibilities. And I remember along the way I had a few lessons with McNeil Robinson, and he, in terms of how to learn a piece of music in a really thorough way, is just masterful. But you don’t have to study with someone for five years to get something immensely valuable, that you’ll never forget.

JR: Were you fairly confident with your registration ability before you studied with John Weaver and Tom Murray?
KC: I guess I was. Since I was a little kid I was fascinated with how stops were built, what the different ones did, the difference between the various colors, and so on. And there were enough nice instruments around that I pretty much understood how that worked—also, my dad was good at registration himself; that helped. If you’re around someone just an hour a week, that’s different than being around somebody all the time—as an aside, you can at any point say, “hey, how come you would do this, as opposed to something else?” And then Jim Bigham, with whom I studied in high school, just has an amazing imagination for registration and a huge instrument at Holy Trinity Lutheran; that was another great stroke of good fortune for me.

JR: When you studied with John Weaver and Tom Murray, did you work more on interpretation, or did they spend a lot of time with registration?
KC: A little of everything. Tom Murray in particular is very attentive to registration; even if he doesn’t change something radically, he is very sensitive to the finest details. Even if you can row your own boat to start with, I’d say to study with Weaver is to learn his system of managing a big instrument. He’s quite amazing in that he can register an entire recital in a couple of hours, and it will sound as though he’s played the organ for a long time, just because he’s so clear about exactly what he’s going to do at every point in a piece. Tom Murray is known as this “orchestralist,” who gives each color in an instrument its best opportunity to shine, so just to watch him do what he does is really an education!

JR: At Curtis, you were required to play pieces from memory. How many pieces have you memorized?
KC: Oh, probably hundreds. I think from year to year there are pieces—especially pieces that I learned when I was in high school—that I find I can usually play without really thinking about it much at all. From year to year I’ll carry around a few recital programs’ worth of repertoire, at any given time, and I try to keep on expanding that. During school semester, for example, there’s just not time to practice the number of hours a day that I’d love to, so I’ll always practice technical things on the piano, even if I don’t touch an organ. I find that to maintain a few hours of music is manageable, but it takes a lot more time to be constantly learning dozens of pieces.

JR: Do you have some favorite pieces? Desert island pieces?
KC: I’ve always loved Bach, and I think as is the case with so many people I ended up playing the organ because of the music of Bach. As things have gone, I’ve gotten into a lot of repertoire that is far from Bach—I’ve always loved symphonic organs, orchestral transcriptions and that sort of thing. But I think I could do just fine with some of the great works by Bach.
Now as far as what’s fun to play in a concert, on, say, a particular type of organ—for Skinner organs, they’re great at something English Romantic; the Willan Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue is a fun piece to play because it relies quite a lot on the interpreter, as does Liszt, Reubke, Reger—if you hear three people play the same piece by Liszt, or Reger, or Reubke, it will sound completely different, as I think it should.
Many people who play those pieces think that it couldn’t possibly be done any other way than their own, because they require a very strong interpretive perspective, but in reality there are of course many possible interpretations. I love playing transcriptions, because on an American symphonic organ, you really push the instrument to the edge of what it’s able to do, and that’s always kind of fun. And historically it’s been controversial because for much of the twentieth century the attitude of most organists was “why would you do such a thing? Go learn some more legitimate organ pieces!”

JR: It’s nice stuff!
KC: Yes, there are so many great pieces that weren’t originally composed for the organ. I think once you do learn most of the standard organ repertoire, it’s fun to look beyond it a little bit and see how an instrument can work at interpreting something else. I have to confess, too, that I started listening to records of transcriptions when I was in high school. I have old recordings by George Thalben-Ball, for example, and I still remember getting two recordings of transcriptions by Tom Murray and Thomas Trotter, I think both made in the ’80s, and so I thought, “Wow! That instrument sounds great—and very expressive. Wouldn’t it be fun to learn how to do that?”
Anybody who gets into this kind of orchestral stuff might be pigeon-holed with “Oh, all he plays is Wagner,” or, “All he plays are transcriptions,” which of course I don’t think is true of anybody who does. One of the keys to having success with transcriptions, though, is to know when it’s a good idea not to play something, because one of the pitfalls about the organ is you cannot bring exactly the same program to every instrument, or else you’ll win some and lose some. I find as with some of the big Romantic works, a transcription can sound great on an ideal instrument and it can sound like a dismal failure on the wrong instrument. I hope to usually be a good judge of when’s the time, and when’s not the time, to play a particular part of the repertoire.

JR: How about the future of this instrument with young people?
KC: I’m always glad when I know someone is bringing kids to a recital. And in a way, it’s a good reason to think about programming very carefully. Every once in a while I’ll play a program that might get a little too—mature for the newcomer.
If I were only playing for myself, I could go on for days listening to very intense-sounding organ music. But I’m not just playing for me; though I guess some people would say you should always be playing as though no one else is there—but someone else IS there. (laughter) So I am usually quite cognizant of the fact that there may be some young person there who’s never heard an organ recital before.

JR: Do you ever program a specific piece with children in mind?
KC: If I know they’re going to be there, yes. Things that are very effective with kids are pieces that are programmatic and tell a story, or pieces that really are “visual” in how the instrument is used. Kids immediately get a kick out of the fact that there are all these different colors and that wow, the organist plays with his feet, and beyond that things like Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre are great for kids, because they understand—they can tell what’s going on in the story as it’s going along. Of course, that’s a transcription, but there’s George Akerley’s A Sweet for Mother Goose nursery rhyme suite—that would be just the thing. I’ve heard some people do things like Carnival of the Animals and so on—that’s another work that’s not originally an organ piece, but can certainly get children’s interest in the instrument. And they all love the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor!

JR: How do you plan a program? Fast–slow, or loud–soft, or keys?
KC: Having interesting key relationships can be nice, particularly if you segue from one piece to the next. More importantly, just not flogging people with the same kind of piece over and over again is a good rule of thumb. For example, I wouldn’t play half a program of, say, a prelude and fugue by Bach, followed by a preludium by Buxtehude followed by Prelude and Fugue on the Name of BACH, and so on—but contrasting forms, contrasting styles. I’ve never been much into the philosophy that “we should always go in chronological order.” It’s more a question of how can you give a good psychological flow to it? I guess that’s the right way to describe it. And it’s different on recordings, too. I think how you listen to a recording is a little different. In a concert, you can go from fast and furious to very intimate, to scherzo, back to this, back to that. On a record, if you do exactly the same thing, you end up with people constantly adjusting the volume control.
Programming is a constant challenge. And then the trap is, when you find a combination of things that you think works really well, to then be able to get out of it. I remember reading an article years ago about Glenn Gould’s thoughts on why he stopped playing concerts; he said he was feeling that sometimes he settled in on the same small number of pieces, the philosophy being, “well, the Beethoven worked in Toronto, it’ll probably work in New York, too, so I’ll play it again!” And again, and again—and so on it goes. Trying something new, even if it means going out on a limb, is a good idea, I think.

JR: You’ve long been an Organ Historical Society convention favorite. How did that get started?
KC: Good fortune, I guess! When I was working at St. Clement’s in Philadelphia, I think it was 1996 the OHS had their convention in Philadelphia; at that time we were doing an Evensong at St. Clement’s as part of the convention, and they wanted Peter to play something, and he was already going to play a recital at the Wanamaker Store, so he said, “I’ll play the prelude, and why don’t you have my assistant play a short program after the Evensong?” I think there was some trepidation at first; “who is this guy?” I guess they liked it. And one thing led to another there; I’ve been back several times since.

JR: Yes, including in 2007 with your wife! Tell me about her, and how you cooked up this scheme.
KC: We met in graduate school; she went to Yale too. While we were students there, I had always liked an old recording I had of Jascha Heifetz and Richard Elsasser playing the Vitali Chaconne, as arranged by Leopold Auer. So on one of JAV’s Skinner series recordings, Joe Vitacco asked me to go out to Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian in Detroit, and I checked out the organ and it’s a great instrument—huge sound, and very mellow sound. I thought this would be a good accompanying organ, and that it would be neat to try and do a violin piece. So I asked Lisa to come along then, and that was the beginning of playing together. In the last seven or eight years, we’ve been asked to play duo programs together, so we’ve always been on the lookout for good repertoire that has been written for violin and organ, and things that transcribe well. We’ll often do an early piece, maybe something that’s contemporary written for those instruments; from the Romantic period, Rheinberger wrote some violin and organ works. I’ll often transcribe a concerto accompaniment for the end, and do a violin concerto as a violin and organ piece. And then we’ll usually do a solo piece each, too.

JR: The review of the OHS convention in the February 2008 issue of The Diapason mentions Lisa playing behind a screen.1
KC: We did the Karg-Elert Fugue, Canzona and Epilogue, for organ and violin, and a quartet of women’s voices is included at the end. I think Karg-Elert may have started this tradition himself, but there’s been a long practice of putting the violinist and the singers either offstage or in the Swell box. And at this particular church it worked, because you could open the door behind the Swell box and there was a hallway in behind. So everyone crammed in behind the chamber and you could have this diminuendo to nothing at the end. It was very unexpected color coming out of the organ chambers suddenly! It was a lot of fun, and everyone was a very good sport about the whole thing. The instrument was a Kimball organ, and certainly played repertoire well, but maybe accompanied even better. So it was nice to show that side of things.

JR: At the AGO convention in Minneapolis you played some new works. Do you play new pieces from memory?
KC: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. One of the things I’ve been working on this week is memorizing them. I find if I have a deadline, it doesn’t take long to get things like that learned. I probably spent a week or so learning each of the preludes and fugues. But then the question is—what do you want to do with it? There’s no question that I play a piece better after a year than after a week. So the rest of the time is spent just trying to refine things and get a clear interpretation, especially with brand-new pieces. The composer Henry Martin is a pianist and is probably known for composing 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano, and he teaches jazz and music theory at Rutgers, Newark. The reason for the commission was that Michael Barone really liked his piano pieces, and so commissioned him to write a couple for organ. Not knowing what his musical taste is—of course, when you learn a piece like that, I found I was initially sort of cautious in an interpretive sense—if it’s not written in the score, well, is it OK to do something? Well, he has a great imagination, and is a good sport about everything. That was actually nice to discover. Interpretive freedom is good! So I really liked them—they’re difficult, but I think will make nice pieces.

JR: Teaching versus performing—do you enjoy the balance that you have right now?
KC: Absolutely! I think it would probably be hard for me to only teach, because you end up living musically only through your students, instead of being able to do something yourself—so you need an outlet. On the other hand, it’s great to work with other people—it’s so satisfying and exciting when students work very hard and get a lot better, and you can help them along their way. This year, it was only the second time in recent memory that I didn’t play Easter Sunday some place. So before cooking dinner for family, I went to Trinity Church where two of my students play, and I had a better time listening to them accompany the Easter service than I would have if I’d done it myself! I’ve always been interested in teaching, so I have no regrets there at all.

JR: Tell us about your position at Westminster. Do you teach service playing, or does your teaching concentrate just on recital literature?
KC: Mostly my colleagues Alan Morrison, Matthew Lewis, and I end up concentrating on creating some kind of structured program of study for each student. I do at times make students learn hymns and accompaniments as part of their lessons. I find that you can teach somebody about as much about creative possibilities at the organ through hymns and accompaniments, at least from a registration point of view, as from anything else, because so often with a lot of the primary parts of the repertoire—Bach, Franck, Vierne, and so forth—you frequently follow convention or instructions for registration; in service playing you have a blank slate, and can really get acquainted with the organ in a more individualistic way.
The school’s strong emphasis on choral training provides a great background for developing graduates who can become very effective church musicians. There are classes in improvisation, courses in organ literature, there’s a class on accompanying at the organ, which is primarily a service playing course. Then the sacred music department offers courses on the history of church music, theology, choral pedagogy and management of programs, worship planning, and congregational song. A broad range of guest lecturers in the organ and sacred music departments address other specific topics. It could be a masterclass on organ playing or literature on some occasions, or frequently guest perspectives on the general field of church music in America.

JR: Do you see any consistent patterns of problems among your students?
KC: Nothing that applies to everybody. In fact, that’s one of the fun challenges of teaching—it’s all problem solving, but everybody’s a different case. For example, some students don’t learn pedal technique in a structured way, and I’m surprised that students coming in at the graduate level sometimes don’t understand very much about registration—that can be a big project. But that’s certainly not unique to everybody; some of them are great at that. Nuanced registration is a hard thing to teach in a short time. And if you encounter people who are trained to do only one thing in a particular situation, it can be a real challenge to make them more curious and sensitive to the precise character of each stop or chorus on different instruments, and how they combine with others. Then comes the issue of how to control the instrument in the context of a complex piece if they’ve never been trained to manage a console with a combination action.

JR: Do you have responsibilities at Westminster besides teaching?
KC: I also am the coordinator of the organ and sacred music program. That involves plenty of meetings, planning, and discussions with other faculty about how to proceed with programs and curriculum. In the past year we have revised the entire curriculum in organ and in sacred music. This year began the implementation of those revisions, which is a big undertaking, but a necessary step to try to keep the program from getting behind the times. Of course, I’m not doing that on my own, but I certainly have to stay involved with how things develop. And then another task for sacred music at Westminster will be to find a faculty member to succeed Robin Leaver, who just retired. Hopefully we’ll soon be looking for the next teacher of sacred music there, but in the current economic climate, universities can be tentative about filling vacancies. Always something, you know! It’s the sort of place where I can stay there until ten o’clock every night and have plenty more to greet me the next morning.

JR: Are you ever able to go hear other organists or other concerts?
KC: Here and there. There’s not as much time as I’d like there to be, because I’m often away weekends, when a lot of great concerts happen. Going to conventions and so forth, I can hear a lot of things in a short amount of time, just to keep track of who’s doing what. And then the nice thing living between New York and Philadelphia is oftentimes there will be good concerts on week nights. Plus, Princeton has some really good music series right in town. So whenever possible, I attend performances.

JR: Do you have any big projects planned?
KC: For Westminster, keeping the department growing stronger is a priority. As far as playing goes, it’s asking myself, what do I want to play now that I haven’t played before? And I’ve got lined up some recordings that I’ve been promising to make and that I haven’t gotten around to yet, so I’ll just keep chipping away at them. A new CD on the big Schoenstein organ at First Plymouth Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, was just released this February on the Raven label. That disc has German Romantic repertoire (Reger, Reubke, Karg-Elert) and a transcription of the Liszt Mephisto Waltz #1. But otherwise it’s a question of just balancing responsibilities out—and finding some time for fun, too.

JR: Thank you so much, Ken!