A Conversation with Christopher Houlihan

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!

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of THE DIAPASON.

Back in 1915, for the Panama-California Exposition, John D. Spreckels dedicated an organ pavilion in Balboa Park to “the peoples of all the world.” The post of Civic Organist of San Diego was first held by British-born Dr. Humphrey John Stewart (one of the founders of the American Guild of Organists), who served from 1917-1932. Stewart’s latest successor is Dr. Carol Williams, also British-born--and the first woman to be appointed to the post. Trained both in the UK and the USA--at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Yale University, and the Manhattan School of Music--Carol’s career today is anchored by her Civic Organist activities, but not limited by them. She has concertized throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, and continues her musical travels when possible. She has recorded a video and twelve CDs (details are available from her website, www.melcot.com). Carol Williams is represented in the USA by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, and in the UK by PVA Management.

Carol traveled to Illinois in March, and we had the opportunity to meet with her as she was preparing for a concert at Chicago’s St. Vincent de Paul Church, home of a 1901 Lyon-Healy organ that is undergoing restoration.

JR: Carol, I’m curious about your theatre organ background--you said you grew up playing theatre organ. Did you start with piano lessons?

CW:  Yes, that’s right. I started piano at age 5; I read music before I could read. There were electronic organs in the family, Hammonds, Lowreys--my aunt had a Hammond--and it just naturally progressed from having a Hammond, then to hearing a theatre organ.  I started theatre organ playing when I was about 13 or 14, and all the way through I continued a very strict piano training. I didn’t start classical organ until I was 17. But it was a natural progression.

JR: By the time you started classical organ, were you playing in theatres?

CW: I was doing concerts, yes, playing some theatre organs. But there were very few theatre organs left in their original surroundings; some had been moved into concert halls in England. I guess I started playing late since I didn’t sing in a boys choir, because I was a girl! The natural progression for the cathedral organist was you sang in the choir and then you naturally moved over--this didn’t happen to me, I just moved over. I heard Carlo Curley at the Alexandra Palace, and that was a turning point, because I thought, “this is really exciting!”

JR: Was it what he played, or how he played it, or the instrument?

CW: Everything! The Father Willis there was not working and there were electronic organs on stage and there were, I think, three or four organists. He was chauffered in, in a white Cadillac, I remember that. And Virgil Fox was there--he didn’t play; he stood out--that’s the closest I got to him. I was seventeen; I just clicked--”that’s my instrument!” I really do see myself as a concert organist. I enjoy playing light music, and it all feeds me, in the sense of keeping me alive. But I don’t see myself as a theatre organist. I enjoy playing it, and you have to be able to play light music in the park; you can’t just play a straight Buxtehude-Bach program--it would just go down like a lead balloon.

JR: I’ve been fascinated by your programming choices and liking them, because I’ve seen how audiences react to a varied program.

CW:  A lot of people find it hard to go into a church--I mean, they don’t see it as a concert venue. That’s why the park is great, because there are no “sacred” connotations, so you can play whatever you like. You can’t always do that in a church--you’ve got to show some respect. But you’ve got to get them in there, you’ve got to get them to stay, and you’ve got to get them to go again. So, you must play what they want to hear.

JR: Did you actually have theatre organ training? It’s definitely a different style of playing and registration. And did you learn how to create theatre arrangements, with the little fill-ins after a bit of melody?

CW: A lot of theatre organ arrangements are done from piano score and piano conductor score. I had two theatre organ teachers. Vic Hammett, who was a really fine artist, had so many innovative ideas, and my second teacher  was Eric Spruce, who was organist at the Empire Leicester Square in London--a very famous venue. They both knew what was entailed for playing theatre organ programs. That was alongside my classical organ training, so they were both feeding each other. It’s musicianship--you listen to orchestral scores, and then sometimes you might take a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical and you carve out your own ideas. You just let the music flow through you. But the training really helps. You work a lot from piano scores and novelty numbers--Zez Confrey . . .

JR: Kitten on the Keys!

CW: Beautiful stuff! James P. Johnson, Scott Joplin, they’re all quite delightful. They work well on a classical program, too. I love playing them!

JR: You play it very well. Some people just can’t make it work and you do.

CW: I like jazz. I think it should be like a soufflé, very light--and the pedal should be more 8-footish than 16 foot, so it really is more light, like a double bass plucking away. It shouldn’t be heavy. If you play Lefébure-Wély, this approach really helps, because that music is very flamboyant--it shouldn’t be stiff and stodgy.

JR: There are people who look down their nose at Lefébure-Wély.

CW: But he was an eminent musician. He was organist at Saint-Sulpice and he was one of Cavaillé-Coll’s key players. There is a funeral march by him, his opus 122, it’s some lovely music--not all oom-pah, oom-pah.

JR: You had so much training in England, then you came to the United States and you earned a DMA here. Why did you feel the need for training in America after such a good solid grounding in the UK?

CW: Well, I came to the States in ‘94, and I did a series of concerts. I really liked it out here. I went back and I happened across a CD of Thomas Murray--The Transcriber’s Art--and I just fell in love with that. You can never learn enough. I remember one teacher saying to me, “you should always remain a student,” always willing to learn. It just seemed right to come out here and do an artist’s diploma with Tom Murray, so I did. And I felt I really should do that DMA--you know, it’s worth having. I admire McNeil Robinson greatly; he’s a tremendous teacher. I enjoyed the scholarly aspect behind it; I did my thesis on 19th-century concert organs in England. The DMA at Manhattan School of Music is fairly performance based, which is me. I didn’t want to spend my time with textbooks and not play the organ. I wanted to play. So it worked out well. And for remaining in this country, I think a DMA really probably does help.

JR: Do you hope to teach some day, or just keep playing? 

CW: I think keep playing. It’s hard for me to take on a series of students because I’m traveling a fair amount and it’s not fair. At this stage I just want to play.

JR: But you did have one church job when you were in New York.

CW: Yes, I was an assistant organist at Garden City Cathedral, and that was good fun; I enjoyed the work. But doing that job, I realized that’s not what I want to do, because I didn’t want to immerse myself in conducting a choir, playing anthems--it just wasn’t me. But it fed me musically. While doing study at Yale, I was organist at Yale University Chapel; that was a good position. But from doing something, you learn something: that you don’t want to do it (if you follow me!).

JR: You seem to have a lot of fun with the Spreckels Pavilion concerts, including dressing up for them. You’ve got your Mexican dress for Cinco de Mayo, and if it’s a sunny day you have sunglasses--have you had to make any wardrobe investments just for that job?

 CW: Yes. A lot of warm stuff! (chuckles)

JR: Really? San Diego is warm!

CW: The building faces north, and it is so cold there this time of year. Actually they’ve just had a heat wave there this week. Yesterday it was in the 90s; this time of year, from October-November-December-January-February, and especially now, February-March, it’s the worst season. So the audience is in the sunshine, but you’re in the cold. And the organ is outside, the console is on the platform, and it kicks up a wind. It is the coldest place I have ever played! I remember Robert Plimpton saying to me, “You’re going to be cold.” I know English cathedrals--how could anything be as cold as an English cathedral? Well, he was absolutely right! I have a lot of silk things, underwear and stuff, layers--I wear a hat and warm coat. What I did start doing is going to the gym a lot, so I work out and that has helped me enormously--just keeping fit. Getting fit, I should say!

JR: What type of exercise do you do?

CW: Pilates and just general workouts--Pilates is really good for an organist, because of the neck--sitting at the organ, especially practicing under a lot of pressure, your neck is vulnerable. I’ve had serious neck problems, actually, and Pilates just strengthens your whole core. It makes you strong, and is well worth it.

JR: How about your shoes? I’ve also noticed that you don’t wear the standard organ shoes like a lot of us do. You’ve found shoes you can manage in?

CW: Yes. I think it’s personal. These are ballet shoes--and the sole is suede, so I can feel the pedals. And I have the heel made up so it’s not too flat. People have criticized them, but they work for me. Everybody’s feet are different. I have a very high arch, so I can’t wear a lot of flat shoes. But these work perfectly for me; other shoes don’t. I find them too solid. I wouldn’t feel supple--I want to feel like a dancer when I play--to feel that your feet are as nimble as your hands. If they’re solid, then it just doesn’t work. But I get a lot of shoes--different colors, too.

JR: Since you’ve had formal training in the UK and here, is the approach to playing any different? Would you say that there are different “schools” between the two countries?

CW: Yes. We have bigger acoustics in England. A lot of the cathedrals have tremendous resonance. A lot of the buildings over here do not have big resonance. One can play faster in dry acoustics; you go back home to England, or France, and you can’t do the same thing.  You play at St. Sulpice, you’ve got to really listen to that organ or it’s like having an argument with somebody and the organ would win. You’ve really got to listen to the instrument.

Each country, each acoustic, the voicing of each organ will bring out a different interpretation; you’ve got to be flexible.

JR: You clearly thrive on travel. Do you have an approach when you come to a new place and you have to learn the organ fast, because you’ve only got so many hours before that concert starts?

CW: It initially starts with them sending you a specification, getting that through the management. That gives you some idea of what you’re dealing with.  But it’s only something on paper. It’s nice to have two days if it’s possible--it should be possible, yet in England, many places, at cathedrals, they’d just give you a couple of hours. And it’s not fair; you barely get through a program, registering; it’s no way for musicians to work. You need that time to register, you need that time to savor the sounds, keep playing it through, always changing sounds--you know, change your balances. It takes a long time! I don’t like to work with my back against the wall because I don’t think I give my best.  I’d like to have two days if I could with an instrument.

JR: And the specification is just the starting point; you don’t know what the organ really sounds like or how responsive it is.

CW: Some of the big organs in this country with a big acoustic may have an action that is very light, and this can be a problem. Playing somewhere like St. Sulpice, the action is heavy but this can be very helpful with a large acoustic as this then allows the music to really make sense in the building.

JR: Are you saying that a heavier action works like a brake?

CW: It helps you. It makes you then appreciate what you’re dealing with: a big, big animal, a big friend. You’ve got to listen to it breathe; and you can’t do that at breakneck speed. Like the organ here: it’s got a big acoustic, the action is nice, but it’s light. You’ve got to switch off and put your ears in the building and listen to it as you play.

JR: About your Spreckels position--when you heard about it, what was it that made you think, “you know, I’d like to apply for that”?

CW: (chuckling) I saw it in The Diapason.

JR: Really!

CW: I did, yes. I remember reading it in The Diapason and I thought, “now that is an interesting position and that’s a position I know I could do,” because it was performance all the time. I always had in the back of my mind if there’s ever any job I wanted, it would be to be a civic organist--Lemare and people like that; his autobiography is fascinating, and the programs he played. I knew that would be me. So I applied. They had many applications--I understand about 100 applications--they narrowed it down to five, and the five were invited to give a Sunday afternoon concert. And I did; I did my best show, I thought. I loved the atmosphere because the audiences there are the general public, because it’s right in the middle of the park, it’s not far from the zoo, and there’s a museum of art, there’s all the big museums there. It’s a beautiful environment--there are about a thousand people there every Sunday afternoon. And I played a concert and I just clicked with the venue, I thought. Because you’re not limited as to what you can play, you can play what you want, within reason, on a big 73-rank Austin organ. And the organ itself is very versatile; it’s basically a good concert organ--plays the main repertoire incredibly well, and transcriptions. But it’s also got a tibia rank, so it plays theatre organ music well, and if you use the orchestral reeds and the couplers and the strings, you can get a good Wurlitzer sound from it. So it’s very versatile and it suits me, because I like to play all types of music. The organ and I, we’re a good marriage, I think.

JR: Do you remember what you played on your audition concert that sealed the deal for you?

CW: Well, I didn’t know for a while afterwards--not knowing is worse than anything! I played from Marchand right through to the Beatles, I remember. I just went the whole spectrum: Widor; Reger; as I said, the Beatles; Bach; a varied program.

The people there, they want to hear all types of music. The concerts are free; the organ was given by John D. Spreckels. And part of the deed was that the concerts have to be free. And I think it’s the hardest audience to play to, because  you get a lot of people who wander by, sit down, and the only way you can keep them there is if you play things that they want to hear, and in a way that they find exciting. If somebody’s paid 30 or 40 dollars for a concert, they’re going to sit right to the end. But if it’s free, they’ll go to another museum. So it’s hard. You’ve really got to connect with them--tell them about the organ, tell them about the music. You mustn’t be stuffy, play things that maybe two people might want to hear. With maybe 1000 people, you’ve got to try and connect with those thousand people. For the Monday night festival concerts we average 2500 people, and then on opening and closing nights we get about 4000. I shared a concert with Joshua Rifkin--I did the first half, he did the second half. He did beautiful ragtime; oh, it was fabulous! And then we did some duets at the end. We had 4000 people! It really was magic.

JR: Did you do Joplin duets with Rifkin?

CW: Yes. Maple Leaf Rag.

JR: You’ve recorded that already on your own.

CW: Yes--I love ragtime!

JR: Duets with Rifkin! He started the whole ragtime revival.

CW: Yes, he did. We owe the revival to him. He has exquisite playing, and it suits the tasteful construction of the music; they work well together. And he’s a great man, too; he’s a lot of fun.

JR: You’ve already talked about one occupational hazard at Spreckels, and that’s the cold. What about in summer? Does it get impossibly hot?

CW: It does get hot. We sometimes have the hot weather from the desert, and that’s what really fueled the fire in October. And it’s a dry, hot wind; it’s unbearable. As soon as you raise that big door on the organ, you suffer; so does everybody. It seems to suck out something from the atmosphere and the tuning unfortunately goes; there’s nothing you can do about that. But the Monday night festival concerts, because they’re at night, don’t have that problem so much. Sometimes you get an atmosphere problem, with moisture in the air, during late August and it can be very damp at night. That’s a problem; the keys get wet and the bench is wet; these are things you have to deal with.

Last year I shared a concert with Hector Olivera. He brought the Roland Atelier. We did the Guilmant First Symphony--he did the orchestra, and I did the solo organ. It was fabulous, absolutely fabulous. As we got to the second page of the Guilmant, I saw the biggest bug on the pedals! And I looked down and thought, “oh, no!” I didn’t have much to do that page, and I jumped off the bench. Lyle Blackinton, the organ curator, removed the bug; Hector looked at me, dazed, like “we haven’t finished, we’ve only just started,” and I jumped back on. The bug was crawling away--it was huge! I was terrified. We have these bug problems and I tell women not to use hair spray or anything like that. There are certain things that you cannot do!

JR: Does the Spreckels program have an endowment that funds the concerts?

CW: My position is two separate positions, actually. I’m the civic organist for the city, and then separately I’m the artistic director for the Spreckels Organ Society. And they put on the summer festival. They work on funding and donations and that’s a lot of work. From that we can put on concerts and pay artists to come and play. But it’s a lot of work because we can’t charge for programs, so it has to be done with donation. Next year is the 90th year with the instrument--she started life December 31st, 1914, so next season, the official 90th birthday, will be a very special year. For the opening concert we’re going to have the three civic organists--Jared Jacobsen, Robert Plimpton, and myself--they’ll call us the Three Tenors of the organ world!

This year’s an international festival; we have organists coming from Poland, Australia, France, Germany, and they’re going to be playing some music from their own countries. So that’s the flavor for this year. Next year will be very much linked with the celebration of the organ. So programs must have a connection with the instrument and the city. I have to say, it is a lot of work planning a festival.

This year, closing night, we are doing a Lloyd Webber Spectacular--including  artists in costumes. I’m playing the accompaniments to Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, etc. After a very serious festival and after a lot of serious organ music, I think it’s good that you have something that’s completely different, and this will bring in a different audience. Otherwise, you keep attracting the same audience, the same organ enthusiasts. So I’m always looking for something different each year that’s going to have a different appeal. I am also going to play some of Lloyd Webber’s father’s music--his father, W.S. Lloyd Webber, was an eminent musician.

JR: The Spreckels website shows pictures that look especially delightful, from programs where you were accompanying young people playing other instruments. That looked like so much fun!

CW: It was good. The concert was with children--”Music with children 2003”--and it’s getting young people involved, and not just organists. I’ve got a singer who’s actually going to be with me opening night--eleven years old and he has a voice that’s just amazing. His name is Daniel Myers.

JR: Is it a boychoir voice?

CW: He’s a boy soprano, but his voice hasn’t broken yet. It’s got power behind it. The director of the San Diego Children’s Choir, Dr. Garry Froese, recommended this youngster--said he wanted to sing Granada. I thought, singing Granada? But I couldn’t believe it when I heard him. Goodness me, the power behind it! So he’s going to be with me opening night.

We do something for children that’s important. That’s for the people of San Diego, that the instrument is used for really good things. I don’t mind if kids play violin, or sing, or whatever--they get a chance to play for a thousand people. And they love it!

JR: When you’re in San Diego, you’re playing at the pavilion. Do you do your practicing there, or how do you manage? Do you have an instrument of some sort at home?

CW:  I have a Rodgers at home. But I actually like going into the park early in the mornings to do practice, because it’s so quiet. I like working with the organ when there’s nobody around, telephones not around. I turn my cell phone off--I know I shouldn’t do that, but I just like to be left alone sometimes. Just get into the music. And there’s a piano in the pavilion, and the building’s very quiet. It’s very peaceful, so I can really get into my work. I make sure that I do so much practicing, then I will put on the computer and sort out the e-mails. I’m really disciplined about that. You can get so stuck into paperwork and e-mails and that; practice comes first for me! If people get in the way of my practicing, I can be very difficult. I mean, I’ve got to practice--that’s what I’m supposed to do! If you get in the way of that, then you’re not going to be performing so well. So that’s definitely first on the list every day.

JR: How much do you practice?

CW: At least three hours a day. I’m happy when I can do five, or when I’m traveling and working with new instruments, it can be up to eight hours a day. It’s a different type of work, getting used to a new organ.

JR: Let me ask you one last question. Where do you go from here?

CW: I love being busy, I love traveling, I love playing. The San Diego position I very much enjoy because you’re getting through to new people all the time. People come there specifically to hear that organ; people come from all over the world to hear it. It’s really refreshing to hear that. Just doing more and more recording; I love French organ music, I want to do some more recording of French organ music. Just keep busy--I’ve hardly started!

JR: Thank you so much.

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.

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!

Michael Barone is host and producer of American Public Media’s Pipedreams program, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2007. Pipedreams can be heard on radio stations across the country, also on XM Satellite Radio Channel 133 and in Hong Kong on Radio Four. Barone is a native of northeastern Pennsylvania, a music history graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, and a nearly 39-year employee of Minnesota Public Radio.

John Weaver, one of the America’s finest concert organists, celebrates his 70th birthday on April 27, 2007. The following interview is offered in honor of this milestone.
Dr. Weaver was director of music at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City from 1970–2005, and served as head of the organ department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia 1971–2003, and also chair of the organ department at the Juilliard School 1987–2004.
His formal musical studies began at the age of six, and at age 15 he began organ study with Richard Ross and George Markey. His undergraduate study was at the Curtis Institute as a student of Alexander McCurdy, and he earned a Master of Sacred Music degree at Union Theological Seminary. In 1989 John Weaver was honored by the Peabody Conservatory with its Distinguished Alumni Award. He has received honorary Doctor of Music degrees from Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, and the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2005 he was named “International Performer of the Year” by the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists.
In addition to his work at the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School, he has taught at Westminster Choir College, Union Theological Seminary, and the Manhattan School of Music. He has written numerous articles for organ and church music magazines and has served as president of the Presbyterian Association of Musicians.
Dr. Weaver has been active as a concert organist since coming under management in 1959. He has played throughout the USA, Canada, Western Europe, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. He has performed on national television and radio network programs in the U.S. and Germany, and has made recordings for Aeolian-Skinner, the Wicks Organ Company, Klais Orgelbau of Germany, a CD on Gothic Records for the Schantz Organ Company, and a recording on the Pro Organo label on the new Reuter organ at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle. His most recent recording, “The Organ and Choral Music of John Weaver,” is available on the JAV label and features his own organ and choral compositions. His published compositions for organ, chorus/organ and flute/organ are widely performed.
He currently lives in Vermont and continues to concertize and lead workshops and masterclasses around the world. The Weavers love to climb the New England mountains, and have a tradition of an annual ascent of Mt. Washington. Marianne is an avid gardener, and John’s hobby is a deep fascination with trains, both model and prototype.
This interview took place July 11, 2005, at the Weaver home in the rolling countryside near West Glover, Vermont.

MICHAEL BARONE: How did John Weaver stumble into the world of the organ?
JOHN WEAVER: We moved away from the little town where I spent the first four and a half years of my life. I have very few recollections of that place, except one of them that’s very strong—the organ at the church where my father was the pastor had a wonderful sound on low E. Something about the 16' stop on that organ resonated in the room in a glorious way, and I fell in love with that. As soon as I learned how to play a few notes on the piano, my favorite thing was to hold down the sustaining pedal and play an arpeggio—slowly at first—and just listen to it ring like an organ. Something in me has always been attracted to that sound.
MB: With whom did you study and how would you characterize those years?
JW: My first organ lessons were with a wonderful organist in Baltimore, Richard Ross. He died at age 39 shortly after having given me a lesson on a Saturday afternoon—just failed to show up the next day at church. Ross was becoming one of the best-known and finest organists in the country. When I first went to him, at the age of 15, instead of auditioning me at the organ, he told me to go up onto the stage of the Peabody concert hall and play for him on the piano. Well, there was a big Steinway up there, but the thing that really interested me was the 4-manual E. M. Skinner. I could hear air escaping from it, and I coveted playing that instrument so badly that I can feel it still today.
Nevertheless, Ross told me that he wanted to hear me play something on the piano. So, I stumbled through my Mozart sonata that was not really very good at that point, and afterward he said to me, “I don’t want you to study organ yet. You need to study at least another year of piano and really work at it very hard.” And then he also said something that I’ve always remembered: “If in the meantime you study organ with anybody else, I will never teach you.”
Well, I took his advice, and I went back to my piano teacher and really did work for a year—then came back the next year and played for Ross again. This time I played the Beethoven “Pathétique,” and I played it pretty well. Ross said, “OK, now you can start studying organ, but you must continue to study piano as well.”
Fortunately I had a very good piano teacher, and I studied with Ross for about a year and a half, until his death. The Peabody Conservatory brought in George Markey as an interim to fill out the rest of that academic year. While I was studying with Markey, at this point as a senior in high school, he said “Where are you going to go to school next year?” I just assumed I would go to Peabody because we lived in Baltimore, and Markey said, “Well, have you considered auditioning for the Curtis Institute of Music?” And I remember asking him, “Where is that?” I was soon to find out a lot about Curtis and also about the great teacher there, Alexander McCurdy. I did audition and was accepted, and had four glorious years in Philadelphia.

MB: McCurdy is something of a legend, and the stories about him are numerous. I expect you have more than a few.
JW: I’ve described him on numerous occasions as an Old Testament figure. He was someone you both loved and feared at the same time—certainly, not one to suffer fools. If you went into a lesson unprepared, you were sure to get a dressing down that would do a drill sergeant credit. But when words of praise came, they were so precious and so rewarding that they could light you up for a whole week. He was a very liberal teacher in that he did not insist on playing any piece of music in any certain way. Within that department at that time we had about six students—there was one student who was very much a disciple of E. Power Biggs, and there were others of us who were much more in the Virgil Fox camp. That was sort of the nature of the department, but McCurdy was as enthusiastic about the fellow who was a Neo-Baroquist as he was about the rest of us. That person, by the way, is Temple Painter, who is one of the leading harpsichordists in the city of Philadelphia and still plays organ as well.

MB: What were McCurdy’s techniques to get the best out of students? What did he create in you that might not have been there before? And then how did you take what you learned from McCurdy and shape that with your own personality?
JW: McCurdy had several ways of getting the best from us. I’ll never forget my first lesson: he assigned a chorale prelude from the Orgelbüchlein, which I had not played, and he said, “Mr. Weaver, I’d like you to play this next week from memory in organ class.” Well, right away it was jump-starting; and seven, eight hours a day of practicing became the norm. At my second lesson, he assigned the Vierne Cantabile, from the second symphony, and said, “I’d like you to play that next week in organ class in front of your peers.” Well, that was really a struggle. And he did that for about three weeks at the beginning of the four years. After that, he never assigned a piece again. But he got me into the habit of learning—I knew he expected that kind of production from week to week.
That’s a Curtis tradition that was started by Lynnwood Farnam, continued by Fernando Germani and by McCurdy, and I believe is still the case—each student comes every week with a new piece memorized to play in class. This could be a little one-page chorale prelude for manuals alone, or it could be a major prelude and fugue, a big romantic work, or a modern work—you could repeat something from previous classes, but you always had to have a new piece also. It got us into the habit of assuming when you started to learn a piece that you were eventually going to play it from memory. There are some pieces that I have never been able to play from memory. I’ve memorized a fair amount of Messiaen, but with more atonal pieces, I find that I am just not comfortable playing without the score.

MB: The challenge for the organist, of course, is that each instrument is different from the next and requires its own learning process. The traveling recitalist comes to a church, gets used to the instrument, gets used to the instrument’s response in the room, and then tries to make music with the repertoire that you’ve brought to town. Perhaps it’s no wonder that fewer organists want to memorize these days, but there’s still something about a performer totally connected to and deeply involved in the music that is missing when a score is being read.
JW: There is always the problem of the page-turner—or, if one turns one’s own pages, that has its risks as well. Page-turners can sometimes pull music down off the rack inadvertently, or pull a page right out of the book, or turn two pages—there are lots of risks. Page-turners also have a tendency sometimes to hum or to tap their foot. I’ve even known some who think it’s safe to step on the pedalboard to reach a page that’s far out of the way—that really does produce a catastrophe.
I guess it doesn’t make a lot of difference if the console is completely hidden. I wouldn’t know if someone was playing from memory or not, but pianists, violinists, singers are expected to walk on stage and play from memory. It’s harder for organists, yes. I like to have 12 to 15 hours at an instrument before I’m ready to play a recital on it. If I had 20 hours it would be better still. If I had 25, I would find a few more things to make that instrument come across in the very best possible way and the music to be the best that I could do. That kind of time is rarely available, but 12 to 15 hours is a norm.

MB: I always get the sense watching you that you really enjoy playing. Now is this actually true or are you just a very good actor?
JW: If it looks like I’m having fun, I’m glad for that because in a way, I am. I also am constantly aware of the pitfalls—how many things might happen that you don’t want to happen and sometimes do. But I do enjoy playing. I love playing recitals, though it scares me, and five minutes before the recital I ask myself “Why did I ever agree to do this?” But once I start playing, why, that departs and I really do settle down and enjoy what I love about the music that I play—hoping that people will catch something of what I’m feeling about that music and my devotion to it.

MB: How did you, a former student at the Curtis Institute, come to be the head of the organ department at Curtis?
JW: One fine day Alexander McCurdy called me up and said, “Mr. Weaver, I’m going to retire from the Curtis Institute, and Rudolph Serkin would like to meet with you and see if you might be an appropriate successor.” (Rudolph Serkin at that point being the director of the Curtis Institute.) Needless to say, I went down to Philadelphia and met with Serkin, and he suggested that I play a recital in Curtis Hall—it was never called an audition recital, but I think they wanted me to clear that hurdle before giving me a green light. Curtis Hall is one of the hardest places to play. It is totally dry acoustically, with a 118-rank Aeolian-Skinner in a room that seats about 200 people—probably more pipes per person than any place else in the world. But it’s an instrument that can, if one works with it, do remarkable things. So I did play the recital and did get the job, and was there very happily for many years. I started in 1971 and retired in 2003—32 years.

MB: How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?
JW: I’ve tried to follow the McCurdy mold. When I was at Curtis we continued the tradition of the organ class—memorization and new pieces each week. I also tried to not impose my own interpretation of any given piece upon the students that I was fortunate enough to teach, both at Curtis and at Juilliard. I do believe that everyone should somehow sound like themselves, that there is some part of themselves and their own musical personality that will affect the way that they perform any piece.
I’ve had students who were extremely flamboyant and almost overdone. I’ve tried to curb that a little bit sometimes, but I certainly don’t want to squelch the enthusiasm and the very strong personal interpretations that a student like that can bring. Sometimes I find a student’s playing to be too conservative, just dull note pushing, and then we talk a lot about the music and about its nature—its liveliness or passiveness or serenity or agitation—trying to have the student project something in the music other than just the notes on the page.

MB: Who were some of your outstanding recent students?
JW: Well, without naming any priority, certainly Paul Jacobs, who succeeded me at Juilliard; Alan Morrison, who succeeded me at the Curtis Institute; Diane Meredith Belcher, who’s on the faculty at Westminster Choir College; Ken Cowan, who is on the faculty of Westminster Choir College and is now the head of the organ department there—and a whole host of others. Those are four that are under management, nationally known, and do a great deal of playing—I’m very proud of them indeed.

MB: How did you come to be at Madison Avenue Presbyterian? What are the different demands, delights, and challenges of being a church musician as opposed to being a fancy-free artist in the world of recitals?
JW: For eleven years, I was at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in New York. While there, my wife and I started the Bach cantata series that continues to this day, and we really made that church known for performances of the music of Bach. In 1970, I knew that the position at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church was vacant. It never occurred to me to apply for it. But one day, a gentleman came into the church office unannounced, no appointment, and asked to see me. When we met he said, “We,” meaning the search committee at Madison Avenue, “were hoping that you would apply.”
Well, having the door opened by him at that point, I decided to follow through with it, and I did so with a great deal of doubt because I had grown up in a Presbyterian church, where the din of the congregational chatter before the service completely drowned out anything that could possibly be done on the organ. And I had the impression that Presbyterians generally did not place a very high value on the quality of the worship, the sermon being the centerpiece of the whole Sunday morning experience. But I met with the committee at Madison Avenue and particularly with their pastor David H.C. Reed, in whom I found a Presbyterian with wonderfully high regard for worship and high expectations for the quality of worship. My fears were allayed. I did go to Madison Avenue in the fall of 1970, and immediately we began changing the nature of the worship service there. The congregation began to sing a great deal more—four hymns every Sunday, plus they began to sing the Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei.
That progressed until the congregation tended to draw people who liked to sing, and so the congregational singing was strong and is to this day. David Reed was followed by Dr. Fred Anderson, who was a musician—his first degree was as a music major—and a great lover of music and of worship. Now one could go to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and the worship experience would be very ecumenical. You would not be certain if you were in a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic or an Episcopal church. It’s very much Presbyterian, but at the same time very ecumenical and very rich liturgically.
MB: Have you considered yourself an organist who composes or have you always thought of yourself as a composer who had to make his way as an organist and a teacher?
JW: Very definitely the former: I’m an organist first and foremost, but I’m an organist who loves to compose. Many composers who try to write for the organ don’t understand the instrument and therefore write pieces that get a premiere performance and are never heard again. In fact, the organ literature that does become mainstream is almost always written by people who play the instrument. One great exception is Paul Hindemith, but he of course was able to write for any instrument, and he always did his research and knew what he was doing—he wrote three wonderful organ sonatas and a concerto.
Years ago, when I was in my early teens, I started going to Vermont in the summer to a music camp for theory. No lessons were taught on piano or clarinet or violin or anything like that. There was no applied music—it was all theory. We had counterpoint classes, form and analysis, and harmony and such, and the result of it was that the students of the camp composed because we had been given the tools of the musical language.
So I’ve gone to Vermont every summer of my life to compose, and now that I live here I hope to do a lot more composing. I’ve also composed primarily things that I myself could use. Although everything I’ve composed for the last 15 years has been on commission, I’ve always written something that I could use in my own work, either in recitals or in church services. I’ve written a lot of choral music and a lot of organ solo pieces and also several pieces for organ and flute because my wife is a very good flutist and we like to be able to play those pieces together.

MB: Do you have any favorites among the pieces that you’ve written? JW: My favorites tend to be the ones that have been performed a great deal. The Passacaglia on a Theme of Dunstable—it may not in fact be by Dunstable, but it was thought to be by him, namely the tune Deo gratias—was composed for the 25th anniversary of the state trumpets at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and I played the premiere performance there. It’s a set of variations in passacaglia form, and one variation is designated for that magnificent state trumpet at the west end of that huge cathedral. Nevertheless, the piece works on instruments that don’t have that particular kind of stop available. The piece has been recorded by a number of people and has been played all over the world—that gives me a lot of satisfaction. It’s also one of my favorite pieces.

MB: How many compositions have you’ve written up to this point?
JW: I’ve probably composed about 20 choral pieces, that is, anthem-length pieces. I’ve also composed all four gospel settings of the Passion story, and probably a dozen solo organ pieces.

MB: And other than the commission that you just received on Friday, the future is an open book at this point?
JW: Yes, actually that’s the only commission I have in hand right now, but I am trusting that others will come in. And if they don’t I’ll write anyhow.

MB: Someone wanting to commission you would do what? Do you have a website?
JW: .

MB: Do you enjoy the process of recording? You’ve made some notable recordings. It ends up sounding as though you’re having a good time, even if you might not be.
JW: No, I hate recording. [laughter] There’s something a little bit antiseptic about it. First of all, one does not get that sense of response from a live audience. You simply do the playing, and then there are people sitting around with scores and dials and they’re wanting to do this over again and that over again—or a siren will go off or there’ll be a clap of thunder; things like that can make it very frustrating. When they listen to a recording, people have no idea about how long it takes to make that, because street noises or other interruptions can destroy what otherwise would have been a perfect take. It’s very hard.

MB: You’ve been performing in Portland on the Kotzschmar organ—well, you must have been a boy in knee pants when you started.
JW: It was in 1956—at the end of my first year as a student at the Curtis Institute of Music—when I first played the instrument that had been given to the city of Portland by Cyrus H. K. Curtis, whose daughter was the founder of the Curtis Institute. So there was a wonderful connection there. And I’ve been back every year since. [Editor’s note: Dr. Weaver played his 50th recital on the Kotzschmar in August 2005.]

MB: The organ is a challenge as a musical instrument—it is this device with so many opportunities for color and dynamics, and yet is an incredibly complex machine, which even at its best seems to be intractable. Is this something that organists don’t think about, they just do? Or is making music on the organ as difficult as it might appear to a layman, seeing all of those controls to be manipulated and the separation between the console and the pipework and all of that?
JW: Michael, I believe every instrument has its challenges. For pianists, the way in which the key is struck is so critical, and a pianist’s hands must cover a large key compass, whereas organs have a shorter keyboard, 61 notes as opposed to 88; and organ music tends to stay in the middle register, so, in a way, that’s much easier. Violinists have tiny strings and a fingerboard, and it amazes me that they can play a C major scale. Violin virtuosos are just astonishing. The challenges of the organ are mastering the pedals, mastering console technique that enables you to draw upon the resources of the instrument—and then also to a very great extent, the imagination that you can bring to bear with so many different colors available. Each person will choose sounds to produce the right color, if I might use that word, for the passage that they’re playing in a way that pianists and violinists couldn’t possibly do.

MB: In the 21st century young organists face not only sustaining the presence of their instrument but actually rebuilding an audience for organ music. I see this as a real challenge.
JW: Yes, it is. Every now and then though, one sees very hopeful signs—one of those being the recent installation within the last five to ten years of a great many organs in the concert halls of this country—something that’s fairly standard in Europe; for instance, the renovation of the wonderful Ernest Skinner organ in Severance Hall in Cleveland, a new organ in Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the restoration of the organ in Boston Symphony Hall, the new Disney Hall instrument in Los Angeles. One could go on and on and name any number of places where new instruments have been installed or old instruments have been restored—to me this suggests that the organ will take, again, its place as a concert instrument and not just a liturgical instrument.
On the other hand, it must be said that concert halls are often not the most perfect, acoustically, for organs. Great organ music was written to sound its best in places with fairly substantial reverberation, such as a large stone church. So concert hall organs are wonderful, and I’m glad they’re being built, and they enable us to do organ concerti and sometimes organ solo recitals. But the church, particularly one that has a long reverberation period, is still where the organ seems most at home.

MB: How would you compare the scene for organs and organists in your day? Was this a peak of energy with that marvelous—some would say divisive, some would say energy producing—polarity between the historicists and E. Power Biggs on one side, and the theatricalists and Virgil Fox on the other? We don’t have quite that type of energy today. I daresay the man in the street, if asked to name a concert organist today, might be hard pressed, whereas back in the ’60s and early ’70s, the names of Biggs and Fox were very much in the public ear.
JW: Biggs and Fox, both of them very talented, extraordinary musicians, had a great advantage of working right at the time that the LP recording was becoming common in the American home. RCA Victor and Columbia were the big producers of LP recordings at the beginning of that time in the early ’50s. And there was Biggs and there was Fox, and these two polarities were represented in the recording industry—that did a great deal for the visibility of the organ and the popularity of organ music.

MB: It could be argued that now is both the best of times and the worst of times—there are far more organ recordings available, representing a much larger panoply of artistry and instruments both new built and historic, marvelously represented—and yet there is so much that the focus is lost to some degree.
JW: Yes, I think that’s right. When it was Biggs and Fox, you could expect to find their names in the crossword puzzle. No organist today has that kind of visibility. Another name that was right up there at the top was Marcel Dupré because of his extraordinary playing and also the fact that he had been the teacher of so many organists in the U.S. through the Fulbright program. There isn’t anyone who has really achieved that kind of star status in the organ world, which is not to say that there aren’t a great many wonderfully talented and brilliant performers. Maybe there are just too many.

MB: Yes, it could be argued that the performance quality of the 21st century is higher than it’s ever been. Do you think that it’s possible with so much talent around for someone to distinguish themselves or do they have to almost jump beyond mere artistry and do something odd in order to be discovered? JW: Perhaps it would be best to think in terms of naming names. The name of Cameron Carpenter who studied with me at Juilliard comes to mind. Cameron is extraordinarily flamboyant, both in dress and personality and in playing. His playing annoys the purists terribly, but certain people are simply mesmerized by his performances. And he is a genius—there’s no question about that. Another name that gets a great deal of visibility these days is the young German organist, Felix Hell, whom I also had the honor to teach. Felix, at first, was famous because he was so very young when he was playing recitals all over the world, literally, as he still does. But now he is taking his place among the more mature artists of the younger generation and plays very well indeed—and has made numerous recordings. So these two are a little bit like Biggs and Fox—Felix tends to be a fairly conservative player, not extremely so but more middle of the road, whereas Cameron is way out there in show biz land.

MB: Presuming it’s something different from that marvelous, resonate low “E” that had you mesmerized as a child, when you play and hear the organ, what sort of thoughts go through your mind? What is it about the instrument that still captures your heart and soul?
JW: Who could not be seduced by the instrument itself? Just the mechanics of it and this great collection of pipes, some of them enormous, much larger than most people realize, and most of them very much smaller. I think when a layman sees the inside of a pipe organ for the first time, they’re always astonished—even if it’s a small instrument, it looks amazingly big and complex. And the large ones, of course, are simply mind-boggling. So there’s something about the instrument: its bigness, its history. When I’m playing an organ, if I’m playing Bach I’m thinking about instruments I’ve played that Bach may have played—there’s this great history and great repertoire, and frankly the sound of the instrument has always seduced me.

MB: How would you characterize your playing style?
JW: Probably other people should do that. I would say that I am in the middle someplace. I probably am a little bit on the extrovert side of dead center, but I also am not one to completely disregard the knowledge that musicologists have brought to us of performance practice, of historic instruments—but sometimes I will just say “this piece that I’m playing on this particular instrument cannot be played in a good, authentic, 18th-century style.” Something must be done to make the music and the organ come together in a way that is satisfying and gratifying. And sometimes that means just throwing the rulebook out the window.

MB: Did you set out with goals? You probably didn’t begin your study imagining you would go to Curtis, and then after having studied at Curtis, you probably hadn’t thought that you might end up teaching there, or at Juilliard for that matter. You’re like a natural surfer who has swum out into the sea and found a fantastic wave and you’ve been able to ride that wave through your career with skill, with accomplishment, certainly with a sense of pride. How do you look back at your career from this point?
JW: I would have to say that as with many careers, a great deal of it has to do with being at the right place at the right time, but also having ability to do the job that is required. I’ve often thought that if I had been five years younger, the Curtis Institute would not have thought me an appropriate age to head that organ department. If I had been five years older, it’s likely that they would have chosen someone else from among Alexander McCurdy’s students.

MB: You have moved on from three prestigious positions and you’ve now settled in what used to be your summer home in rural Vermont, up in the marvelous rolling countryside in the northeast corner of the state. Somehow, I can’t think of you as retiring. What projects have you set for yourself for the future?
JW: The mail recently brought a new commission for a new organ piece—that’ll be one of the things. I do want to continue to compose. I’m playing a number of recitals this year including two that I’m extraordinarily excited about, because I will be reunited with the instruments that I had my first lessons on. One of them, the Peabody concert hall Skinner, was put in storage for about 40 years, and then set up at a big Roman Catholic Church in Princeton, New Jersey. A week later I will be playing a recital on the wonderful Skinner organ at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, where my teacher Richard Ross was the organist, and before him, Virgil Fox—a beautiful, perfectly untouched Ernest Skinner that really is quite a marvelous instrument. And I’m playing some other recitals and some dedications around the country.

MB: So, you keep your organ shoes polished and ready to go?
JW: Indeed so.
[Editor’s note: Dr. Weaver has announced that the 2007–2008 concert season will be his last for regular concert activity.]

MB: Tell me about some of your memories from being “on the road.”
JW: The wonderful occasions that I love to think back upon are two recitals that I played—one in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, for a national convention of the American Guild of Organists, in which everything went the way I wanted it to. I loved the instrument, the audience was wonderful, the acoustic was great. And the other one was the Mormon Tabernacle—a recital I played when the Tabernacle was having a three-day symposium to celebrate the restoration of the organ there. Everything was fun, and the instrument was to die for, and of course the acoustics are world famous.

MB: Tell me about your railroad fascination. Where did you grow up? Mauch Chunk?
JW: Yes, Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, is a little town north of Allentown and Bethlehem, about 20 miles up into the Pocono Mountains—it’s in a ravine cut by the Lehigh River, and there was a railroad on both sides of the river that ran through the town. The town is now called Jim Thore, but its historic name of Mauch Chunk has great importance. Anyhow, it was a railroad town, and being in this mountain ravine, day or night you could hear the sound of a steam locomotive. The bells and the whistles and the smell of coal smoke were a constant feature of that place. I can remember standing by the railroad track and holding my father’s hand and counting the number of cars on a freight train as it rolled through. It became a part of my life—a very strong hobby, and we are seated right now in the midst of a model railroad that I’m creating that is 26 by 36 feet and has 390 feet of track in it. This is my last model railroad—if I live to 150 I might actually finish it.

MB: And you had one in your office at Madison Avenue Presbyterian.
JW: Yes, unfortunately when I retired from Madison Avenue that meant the end of that railroad, but all of those trains and the structures and the little people and the automobiles and all that are now a part of the railroad here.

MB: I’m sure the compositions that you created for Madison Avenue Presbyterian remain in the files there for the choirs to sing. It’s too bad that your railroad installation in the office wasn’t kept by your replacement.
JW: In the search for my replacement, a fondness for railroads had nothing whatsoever to do with their choice. So.

MB: What of your siblings and in what directions did they go?
JW: My older brother took piano lessons from the same teacher that I had, and he could see that I was making faster progress, so he switched to violin and became in his high school years a reasonably good violinist—he played second chair, first violin in what was at that time a very good high school orchestra. My younger brother is a wonderful tenor, does a lot of solo work in the western Massachusetts area, teaches mathematics at Mount Holyoke College, has an abiding passion for music and even does some composing—he has been published.

MB: And your parents’ musical backgrounds?
JW: Both of my parents played the piano, my father better than my mother. My father had also studied organ for a year or two, and could get through a hymn—knew how to use the pedals a little bit for hymn playing. My mother was an artist, did a master’s at Carnegie Tech and then studied for a year at the Sorbonne—the walls of our houses are covered with paintings that she did over the years.

MB: With your family’s church affiliation and your being a church organist, it’s maybe not surprising that some of the most lovely works that you’ve created have been fantasies on or settings of hymn tunes. You certainly do respond to the church’s song in your compositions.
JW: Well, I love playing hymns. I especially love hymns when a congregation is stirred to sing really well—that’s a wonderful experience. Very often the reason for writing pieces based on hymns has to do with the nature of a commission that I have received. In fact, almost always when I have composed a piece based upon a hymn tune, it’s been requested by the person who commissioned the composition.

MB: Did your parents live to see the honor accorded their son who went on to great things?
JW: My father was very gratified to live to see my appointment to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. It was one year later that I was appointed to Curtis. By that time, my mother had died, and my father was not at all well. My father did not particularly encourage my desire to be a professional organist. He, as a minister of a medium-size church, saw that as being at best a part-time job, which would mean having to do something else on the side, and that’s always a difficult life. I think he was very happy to see that I had the security of a full-time church position that was also in a church of great prominence within the denomination.

Michael Barone adds: When I first heard John Weaver play, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for the AGO convention in 1984, I was charmed by his physical presence (Mr. Clean in a dinner jacket!), awed by his control of the instrument (and himself), and beguiled by his musicianship. Subsequent convergences have confirmed my first impressions. John is a modest man of major accomplishments, a patrician artist and persuasive virtuoso who has fostered and encouraged the talents and individuality of an inspiring array of youngsters. He is a musician whose own playing leaves a lasting memory, and whose compositions touch the soul. He’s a guy I’ve been both honored and delighted to know. Happy birthday, John!

John Weaver will be the featured guest/topic of a Pipedreams broadcast (#0717) during the week of April 23, 2007, which will remain available 24/7 in an online audio “programs” archive at www.pipedreams.org.

Michael Barone's John Weaver interview

See the interview here.

Other items of interest:

John Weaver honored by Juilliard

John Weaver honored by Union Theological Seminary

Honoring John Weaver's 80th birthday

John Weaver dies at age 83

John Weaver honored by long time representative

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of THE DIAPASON.

James Kibbie is perhaps best known through his position as professor of organ at the University of Michigan, where he has served on the organ faculty since 1981. Also quite active as a performer and clinician, Kibbie is at present involved in a project to record all of J. S. Bach’s organ works, with the recordings to be made available, free of charge, through Internet distribution rather than CDs (see www.blockmrecords.org). A portent of this is Kibbie’s own website (www-personal.umich.edu/~jkibbie/), where the professor has presented a yearly “Christmas card” of a downloadable performance, recorded on the Létourneau instrument at his home. We talked with James Kibbie during a visit he made in May 2007 to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois to present a recital and masterclass.

Joyce Robinson: Let’s begin by asking how you got “the bug.”
James Kibbie: I’m from Iowa! A lot of organists are from Iowa, and the way I got interested in the organ was the way that every single organist does, by hearing it played in church. It is a really valuable thing for churches to allow young musicians access to the organ. That was the case in the congregation where I grew up, and I think that experience is what creates organists.

JR: Did you come from a musical home? Were your parents musicians? Did they encourage your musical studies?
JK: My mother was a pianist, and I begged her to teach me to play. She was a school teacher, and she knew kids pretty well. She was smart enough not to try to force me to practice. Instead, the rule was that either I practiced regularly, or I had to give up completely and never touch the piano. That was enough motivation (sometimes just barely). My father was also a teacher, and he believed fervently that young people should pursue their own dreams and goals, wherever that led them. He always encouraged me, though I think it was a surprise to him to have a musician for a son.

JR: I notice you are wearing a POE shirt!
JK: This is from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a couple of years ago. I am so hot on this idea of pipe organ encounters! They have been enormously successful. I’ve taught at a number of them with somewhat different formats, and it turns out that any format for the POE works, because if you just bring young people together with the organ, the instrument sells itself.

JR: AGO statistics don’t show college enrollments going up. By now POEs should have had an effect, but they don’t seem to be increasing enrollment in organ programs.
JK: We’re doing well with enrollment at the University of Michigan. Not just in numbers, but in terms of quality—phenomenally gifted students, particularly undergrads. We routinely see now on résumés from students who are applying that they have as high school students attended at least one, many times more than one, POE. We definitely see the results—not just in numbers, but in the level of preparation for students.

JR: That’s reassuring. Now where did you get your bachelor’s degree?
JK: What at that time was called North Texas State University. It’s now the University of North Texas. I got bachelor’s and master’s there, with Donald Willing.

JR: And then you went on to Michigan, and you studied with Marilyn Mason—who’s now your colleague!
JK: Yes. I was really lucky—I had those two master teachers, who are very different as musicians and as people, but they were both so kind to me. And it turned out later that they were both exactly the right teacher for me at that particular time in my development.

JR: You went on to win some competitions—the Grand Prix de Chartres and the Prague competition. You had recorded and played music of Czech composers—Ropek, for example—was that an outgrowth of the competition?
JK: This was in 1979, at the height of the Cold War, so it was a very different place than the Czech Republic is now. After the winner’s recital at Dvořak Hall in Prague, Jiří Ropek came up and introduced himself and invited me to have dinner with him and his family. He was professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory and also organist at St. James Church, which is a historic church in the Old Town section of Prague. That started a long, warm friendship. In fact, one of the pieces I’m playing tonight is his variations on Victimae Paschali—he gave me a copy of the score to those variations at that first dinner, and said that he hoped maybe I would learn them and perform them, and I have performed them many times over the years. He passed away in 2005.
During the first years that I knew him, we corresponded—though not too often, because he said if he received too many letters from the West, it was a red flag to the Communist authorities, and he got in trouble, because he was a known opponent of the Communist regime, so it was certainly easier for him after the fall of Communism. He had earned a doctorate at the Carolinian University in Prague, but the Communist government had prevented it being awarded. Finally, in 1990, when Communism ended, the university could officially award him the doctorate that he earned over 40 years earlier. It’s remarkable!

JR: You’ve been at the University of Michigan now for over a quarter of a century!
JK: That’s right, 26 years. I love it! I get up most mornings looking forward to most of the things I’m going to do that day. I realize that’s a gift that not everyone has.

JR: Over the course of over a quarter of a century you must have noticed some changes, both in the program and in the students.
JK: There have been big changes in the field of church music, and all of us are either working as church musicians, or teaching students who will work as church musicians, so it’s central to everything that we do. I don’t think anyone of us could have foreseen all of the ways that church music has changed over the past 25 years. That means we can’t foresee how it’s going to change in the next 25 years.
I’ve been thinking about this—how do I prepare my students when I can’t foresee exactly all of the ways they’re going to need to change and adapt professionally? The answer must be to return to core values—to teach the commitment to excellence. If I can communicate to students that there’s one standard of music-making for everything that we do—our best effort—that is the thing that will serve them well no matter how the field changes.
If I’m coaching how you play an ornament in Bach, or how you achieve a legato line in Franck, I’m not just dealing with that repertoire, I’m modeling for the student this attention to detail and integration of all of the elements of performance that they’re going to have to rely on to create music in ways that I might not be able to imagine right now.

JR: Do you talk with your students about the job situation in church music?
JK: Yes, and without apology, we position our students to compete for the jobs at the top end. There the situation is quite favorable—salary, working conditions, the artistic content of the jobs—can be very satisfying. Where our profession is really struggling is in the part-time positions, particularly in some communities where there is not a tradition of paying well for church musicians. Those aren’t the kind of jobs necessarily that our graduates from the University of Michigan apply for, but they’re the jobs that the majority of our professional colleagues nationally are holding.

JR: Have any of your prior students been in touch with you and communicated that a church job they were in was starting to go in the “happy- clappy” direction?
JK: Oh my, yes, sure! (laughter) But if nothing else, we can take Johann Sebastian Bach as our model—if things don’t go well in a church job, you look for another one, but you don’t quit the present job until you find the new job first, which is what he did!

JR: Can you discuss the imbalance of today’s high level of talent, yet fewer college teaching positions and fewer upper-rank positions for church musicians?
JK: I recall something that I heard about the American jurist Daniel Webster. When he was a young man, he apparently wanted to become a lawyer. He went to his father and said, “I’m interested in the law as a profession, but it’s very crowded. I’m not sure about the job prospects.” His father said, “Remember—there’s always room at the top.” I’ve told that story to my students countless times. The answer for them is that they have to position themselves in terms of their abilities and their résumé and their preparation to compete at the top.

JR: How has your teaching changed over the last 25 years? Do you use different method books now?
JK: The longer I’ve taught, the more comfortable I’ve become communicating my own point of view. That’s what students come to their teacher for, and ultimately it’s all the teacher has to offer. I’ve used several method books successfully, but I keep coming back to The Organist’s Manual (love the pun) by Roger Davis. It has a superb selection of repertoire and just the right amount of technical exercises and explanations. If students balk at the price, I explain how expensive it would be to buy all of the repertoire separately.
When I was a freshman organ major, I assumed I’d study the “canon” of great organ music. Most organ students still expect that today, but there has to be room in our canon for great, noble music by living composers, including women, and music from many cultures and traditions—African-American composers, for example.

JR: At the University of Michigan there is a scholarship fund established in your name. How’s that going?
JK: It’s going very well! It’s endowed permanently, so we award it in perpetuity every year. It’s one of a number of named scholarships that we have and it is so necessary. You know that the costs of education are far beyond many families’ ability to pay, and church musicians don’t have the potential for large income after graduation the way some other fields do, so we have to have scholarship funding for our students. It’s essential.

JR: That’s quite a tribute. It was your students who set that up.
JK: They did, and it was done at the conclusion of the complete Bach works series that I played in 2000. It was announced at the final concert of that Bach series. They “passed the hat” at that concert, and then one of my alums, Dr. Edward Maki-Schramm, led the fund-raising, and it’s done very well since.

JR: As musicology evolves there’s always something new in performance practice. Do you keep integrating this with your teaching?
JK: I do, and particularly for older music—Bach and Buxtehude—there are so many questions that all of us have that must be answered just to play the piece. That’s what I concentrate on—the practical performance-based decision-making that performers must face. I have gradually come to understand that some of those questions—for example, in Bach’s time—had a precise answer. Whether or not I can discover it after more than 250 years is another question. Some of those questions never had a single answer. There was a range of possibilities open to the performer, and the individual performer was expected to make personal choices from that range of what was possible or appropriate.
That’s what resulted in a unique personal performance, which is so vital to all music, especially Baroque music. Performing Bach or Buxtehude is more of a partnership between the composer and the performer than is true of music of some later generations. I have increasingly moved in teaching to encouraging students to identify what that range of possibilities, historically, is, and to make their own choices within that range to create a performance that might be very different from my conception of a work—or someone else’s—but still faithful to the intent of the composer.

JR: Do you have an overall philosophy of performance practice?
JK: What I value most in music performance is the sense of certainty—a compelling performance, a convincing performance: “This is the way it goes!” Dr. Karl Schrock, one of my doctoral students years ago, said to me, “I think the most authentic performance is a convincing performance.” I have decided that what creates that sense of being so convincing is not just making effective decisions about all of the issues of performance—registration, tempo, ornamentation, articulation, nuance—but that intuitive ability of some performers to integrate all of their choices into a single vision of the music.
That’s what I concentrate on in teaching. When I judge competitions, I think that’s what I respond to—not necessarily looking for somebody who plays the piece the way I do, but who creates that sense of certainty.

JR: Some performers maintain that Bach, for instance, should be played in a certain way.
JK: Anybody who knows the nature of the historic record has to acknowledge that there is so much we don’t know. The answer to so many of these questions is—we don’t know. If anyone pretends to know how Bach played the organ, they’re deluding themselves. We have to be intellectually honest enough to be able to say the words “I don’t know.”

JR: Bach was such a musician and so knowledgeable about the organ; if he had the instruments and technology we have today, would he have used them?
JK: He might have written very different music. All of these people—Bach, Buxtehude, Franck, Dan Locklair—are using the materials that they have at hand to create great music: the kind of organs, the way people play the organ, the abilities of the musicians they’re working with. And because they’re geniuses, they use that raw material to create great musical works. So then if, after the work is created, I depart from that, I introduce anachronisms—the word means “out of time,” something that doesn’t belong to the time of the composition—I weaken it.
Even though it’s true that Bach might have used different sorts of organ effects that weren’t available to him then, the fact is that not having had them, he wrote music that doesn’t need them. Actually, by introducing them, we’re weakening the musical content of what he provided us. Our generation’s contribution to the understanding of performance practice has been that the music sounds best if you hear it approximately in the context of how the composer conceived it. Within that, as I said, there’s so much that we don’t know.
Our generation hasn’t grappled with what may be the central question: if I can create a 100% authentic performance, if I could play the organ exactly as it existed, the instrument that Bach knew, in exactly the acoustics, and play every detail of the performance exactly as Bach did it, my audience would be listening to it with 21st-century ears, not 18th-century ears. As a result, it’s a radically different piece of music.
We have not begun to address that limit on authenticity, and I think it’s probably the next generation that’s going to have to grapple with that. Our generation seems not to have been willing to think about that.

JR: One of the current trends in organ building is in the direction of larger scales and higher wind pressures—we’ve moved away from the Orgelbewegung and now we’re in another direction. Is this a fad?
JK: The best organ builders may draw inspiration from various historic periods, but they invariably build instruments that are of their own time and their own place, and that reflect the personality of that builder. The artistic direction of the particular builder doesn’t come essentially from historic models; you can learn from E. M. Skinner or Arp Schnitger or whomever, but the finest builders must gradually develop their artistic personality. I am not as interested in historic modeling as I am in the quality mechanically and tonally of the instruments, judged by contemporary standards.

JR: You have a Létourneau instrument.
JK: In my house—I’m so proud of it. We have another Létourneau at the University of Michigan. My colleague Michele Johns recently led a project to relocate that organ to a newly created small concert hall that’s a joint project of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and the School of Public Health. It will be the focus of an ongoing series of chamber music concerts and will also be used for teaching and practice. The room is great—cabaret seating, a catering kitchen, and even a rose garden.

JR: Let’s talk about the instruments at the University of Michigan.
JK: Our students typically have some of their lessons on the big four-manual E. M. Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner organ in Hill Auditorium, some lessons on our Fisk in the style of Gottfried Silbermann, and some lessons on one of the two studio organs. We also have the Létourneau organ in its beautiful new hall, and we have a number of tracker and electric-action practice organs. All are pipe organs, of course. That’s what students expect, and only a pipe organ allows for performance of the repertoire to the standards we require. We also have access to some fine organs in local churches—Ann Arbor is a great “organ town.”

JR: Did you choose a Létourneau for yourself because of the one at the university?
JK: Yes, and because I had worked as consultant on a number of projects where Létourneau had been the builder chosen, and I developed a particular fondness and respect for his instruments. When I got this house organ in 2000, I wanted to make a little recording—sort of like a baby picture, you know, the proud parent!—so I recorded a partita Hugo Distler had written for his own house organ and put it on my website as a free download at Christmas time. That began what’s now an annual tradition.

JR: Your Christmas card!
JK: Yes! And I tracked the month-by-month downloads for those various recordings, and where the requests for downloads were coming from. It’s phenomenal, the number of people that month after month download these little house organ recordings—from Romania, China, western Europe, South Africa—all over the world! That’s what alerted me to the importance of this field of Internet downloads, and it’s one of the things that made me decide to release the Bach recordings as free Internet downloads rather than as commercial CDs.

JR: Do you have a grant for the Bach recordings?
JK: It’s very expensive, about $60,000 over three years to make the recordings, plus the expenses connected with the website. I puzzled a long time over how it could be possible. Then Dr. Barbara Sloat came to see me. I hadn’t met her before, but she explained she wanted to do something to honor her husband Barry, who was nearing the end of his life. He had attended all 18 recitals in the complete Bach series I had given at the University of Michigan in 2000. She wanted particularly to recognize Barry’s interest in the organ and in Bach, and she offered a very generous donation toward my Bach recording project. The University of Michigan has provided the remainder of the funding.
It’s a three-year project to record the complete organ works of Bach on historic 18th-century organs in Germany. As the recordings are made and mastered, they’re put on this website (www.blockmrecordings.com), sponsored by the University of Michigan, so that they can just be downloaded free by anybody, anywhere in the world.

JR: Your project is recording Bach on historic instruments. What were the criteria you used for choosing instruments to record on?
JK: There’s no single “Bach organ,” because he wrote for such different instruments over the course of his life, from the North German organs he knew in his youth to the late Baroque organs of his Leipzig years. I haven’t tried to make my recordings an anthology of historic organs. I’ve chosen a limited number of instruments, so I can deal with each instrument in detail. The 2007 recordings are on three Silbermann organs, the one-manual and two-manual instruments in Rötha, and the magnificent three-manual organ in the Dresden Kathedrale. About seven hours of repertoire on these organs is now posted on the website.

JR: Robert Clark recorded on the organ at Naumburg. Is that one of the instruments?
JK: No, instead I’m using two Trost organs next year that have a similar late-Baroque character, in Waltershausen and Grossengottern. But I love that recording of Robert Clark! I think the performer, the repertoire and the organ all match perfectly. He must have thought a long time in putting it together—selecting not only the organ, but the pieces that would go with the organ and go with him and what he wanted to do. I think it’s one of the great Bach recordings.

JR: What will you tackle next after your Bach project on the Internet?
JK: Bach is enough to think about right now, but I’ve already decided that my reward in 2009, when I finish all of the Bach recordings, is going to be particularly to go back to the organ works of Franck. It’s been several years since I’ve performed Grande pièce symphonique, for example. I’ve performed all of the Franck works, but I’m looking forward to going back to them as a sort of reward for finishing the Bach project.

JR: Do you have any favorite instruments that you like to play, besides your own?
JK: Instruments that belong to the time and place where they were built, not instruments that try to do everything, but instruments that do one thing, or one slice of the pie, particularly well. If you have a beautiful instrument, it lends its beauty and its integrity to anything that you play on it. Silbermann never thought of his organs playing anything other than contemporary music—music of 18th-century Germany—and yet churches with Silbermann organs have very multi-faceted musical programs, and the organ is central to that music program now in the 21st century as much as it was in the 18th, in ways that Silbermann couldn’t imagine. Because the instrument is so beautiful and so well built, it becomes flexible over time.

JR: Do you have an overall hopeful view of the organ world, especially in our culture? Ours is a culture of mediocrity, feeding off the bottom. How do we who feed off more lofty things deal with this?
JK: I’m enormously optimistic. The level of organ performance right now in this country is the highest that it’s been, I think anywhere, historically. The students, particularly the undergraduate students that we’re getting at the University of Michigan, are some of the finest talents that we’ve ever had. The quality of organ building is as high as it’s ever been in this country; there are new pipe organs being built all the time, including some really significant instruments in high-visibility venues. I am not worried!