In the Wind. . .

Keep your distance.

In both the May and June issues of The Diapason, I wrote about watching the world react to the spread of the novel coronavirus. I have told you how my family and I left New York City for our place in Maine, leaving behind the horror of the spread of vicious contagion in a densely populated city. Individual boroughs of the city have higher death tolls than many countries, and our friends there tell of fear and loss. As I write in mid-May, there have been over 160,000 cases confirmed and over 13,500 deaths in New York City. There have been thirteen cases and no deaths confirmed in Lincoln County, Maine, where we live.

We left New York two days after Broadway, Lincoln Center, and all the museums of the city were closed, that great engine of culture, those vibrant theaters, those stately crowded buildings all going dark at once. By that time, virtually every college and university had closed or was closing. Social media pages became clamors of teachers comparing notes about how to teach from a distance and students facing unprecedented interruptions in their education. I am particularly well connected on Facebook where my community includes some three thousand organ professionals, and I have been impressed by the thoughtful interchange.

I wrote a post asking colleagues if they would be interested in talking about distance learning and, with a half dozen responses, spent more than ten hours last week on FaceTime, Zoom, and video chat (and on the phone when the internet got slow), conversing with friends and colleagues about how they were developing methods to cope with this untenable situation, keeping the wheels of learning turning.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

The common opener was that it is nobody’s first choice to close a campus and send students home, there is no precedent, and we had better figure this out. The biggest variable is whether students have access to organs, pianos, or even cheap keyboards during the closures. When away from campus, students live in a wide variety of circumstances. While some students go home to luxury, others return to poverty where shortage of food is an issue, never mind whether there is a piano, let alone an organ. Before being able to establish connections to continue teaching, some teachers have petitioned their schools to provide instruments, WiFi connections, and, in some cases, food.

Christa Rakich teaches organ performance at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where students were informed a week before spring break that the school was closing and they needed to vacate their dorm rooms. There was a flurry of activity as clothes, books, and personal items were packed and parents came to help ferry stuff home. There must have been a shortage of cardboard boxes in town.

Because Zoom and other video conferencing platforms can be shaky and imprecise, Christa is using video recordings as a primary tool for private lessons. Students send recordings to her that she watches with scores and sends emails with comments referring to measure numbers. “It’s tedious progress, but it’s progress, and helpful for them to have my return email in hand for the next practice session.” 

Christa is also sending weekly “Improv Challenges” to her students by email. In an email before our conversation she wrote, “I submit this with an audio file. I record myself improvising, for example, a two-voice chorale prelude or a pedal cadenza or a fugal exposition in three voices with a cadence, something contained and short. The email includes instructions on how I did it or perhaps a written sample. Students are challenged to send me back an audio file using the same technique with a different tune.”

Early on, Christa experimented with live playing over Zoom for studio class, but found that the platform was unstable, so she and her students have spent productive time together planning future projects, working hard to keep a productive learning environment in place as much as possible. According to Christa, the administration of the school is encouraging students’ ideas for study projects and reading, supporting their creativity by giving credit—“everything you do counts as work.” 

Andrew Scanlon is assistant professor of sacred music and organ performance at East Carolina University and organist at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, North Carolina, where Andrew’s students are accustomed to having their lessons on the spectacular forty-five-stop C. B. Fisk, Inc., organ (Opus 126, 2005). The university has supplied the faculty with tutorial videos on distance learning helping Andrew to develop techniques for video teaching, and he has been able to find access to organs for all his students. He reports that the organ literature course he teaches has been easiest to transfer, mostly by giving lectures online. He is guiding students toward the AAGO exam and continuing their improvisation training.

Nicole Keller has been teaching organ and harpsichord students at Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music, Berea, Ohio, for twenty years. During our conversation, she spoke of how the school’s administration has been sharing information openly with bi-weekly video town hall meetings for the faculty, and the school’s IT department is helping with information about available resources and helping to get students online. Nicole is facing this disruption, wondering how she can use the experience to become a better teacher. She is finding the exchange of recordings to be effective, and to a lesser extent, playing through Zoom. She added that external microphones for laptops make a big difference in the sound quality, especially when using Zoom, and mentioned that the conservatory has provided microphones for the students.

George Emblom teaches at the University of California at Berkeley and is director of music at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. He started our conversation with the simple comment that this is unprecedented. No one expected this, and no one had planned for it. With the campus and church building closed, he has been able to secure access to instruments for his students, even in some cases through loans from members of the choir at Saint Mark’s where his students have their lessons on the Flentrop organ. 

We are all learning and developing the art of distance teaching simultaneously, and George believes that some of the new techniques will continue to be useful when we are able to return to teaching private students face-to-face. He particularly mentioned shared video recordings, commenting that he is spending a lot of time watching the pinwheel on his screen as videos are downloading. Students send videos to him through Google Drive, and he shares his screen with them, allowing student and teacher to watch together in real time. He has found that students benefit greatly from watching their performances, seeing their posture, hands and feet, and the motions of their bodies, both useful and unnecessary. “At measure 43, do you think you looked comfortable?” He intends to continue using this tool in the future.

George’s performance degrees are in piano. Remembering that there were always two pianos in a teacher’s studio so the teacher could demonstrate, he has been using the piano more extensively as a teaching tool and considers this another technique to be developed and used more in the future. He also reminded me that the concept of distance teaching for serious musicians is in its infancy. He is in conversation with colleagues around the country comparing and assessing techniques and imagines that new and more powerful platforms will be developed quickly.

Jonathan Moyer is assistant professor of organ and chair of the organ department at Oberlin and organist at the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, Ohio. He is teaching some private lessons with students sending him recordings followed by video conferences, usually on Zoom. But he is really focused on finding new ways for students to learn. Organ literature classes are productive as he can provide listening lists on YouTube. Students “mute out” to listen, then return for discussion. He shares PowerPoint slides on Zoom and gives out reading assignments, some of which temporarily take the place of performance.

Oberlin is well known for its extraordinary collection of more thirty organs, and Jonathan feels that a big part of education there is being on campus with those instruments, sharing musical inspiration in person with students and teachers. He feels that most of his students have had enough of the “video thing.”

Katherine Johnson is a third-year student of Christa Rakich at Oberlin. She spoke of the shock of being told to vacate her dormitory just before spring break. She is working hard to make the most of it and is fortunate to have a Hauptwerk instrument in a relatively private space at home where she is working on the “self-taught” piece she has chosen for her jury, whenever that will be. In course work, she notes that her fellow students are in different time zones, which makes it difficult to schedule class meetings online, but she is generally impressed by how video platforms make distance learning possible.

§

I am grateful to the six people who spoke with me last week. Each spent an hour or more with me and shared not only how they are approaching the different acts of teaching and learning, but also about their concerns for each other. All five of the teachers echoed their concern for the well-being of their students, many of whom have been shuttled off campus into stressful situations of crowded houses full of distance learners and parents working from home. WiFi is everything, and housemates are having to negotiate for bandwidth. Students who are strongly self-motivated are finding rich new ways to learn, while others are struggling with the difficulties and uncertainties of their situations and the disruption of their education.

As of this writing, none of the schools involved has yet made announcements regarding the status of the fall semester. Jonathan Moyer mentioned that Oberlin would be deciding by mid-June whether to open the campus for the fall, perhaps without large ensembles and with limited class sizes. Different schools are considering having only single rooms in dormitories and somehow staggering the semesters, a scheme that falls apart in a hurry when you get to communal bathrooms.

All of the teachers spoke of the spirit of camaraderie and cooperation among students. Everyone I spoke with mentioned fatigue, especially screen fatigue. Even if you are used to spending hours in a practice room or teaching studio each day, you are still moving around between classrooms, offices, and dormitories. Likewise, there was a lot of talk about maintaining energy, keeping things lively and inspiring in online discussions. Teachers are spending lots of time just talking with their students, helping them redefine their dreams and ambitions while staying optimistic.

And what about church?

All but one of the teachers I spoke with also serve as church musicians, and each shared a little about how online worship is working. Very few church buildings are open, so most are either sorting and streaming recordings from years past, or recording preludes, postludes, and hymns on whatever instrument they have at home.

Last month we published a photo of John Cantrell, choirmaster and organist at Saint Michael’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan seated at the desk he has adapted for the production of the church’s video services. He described to me the challenge of creating an essence of worship for the congregation. He has always been interested in audio engineering, but “this video thing” is new, and he has been learning on the job. He and the clergy have been drawing on the example of Mr. Rogers and his legendary ability to communicate on television with children. How did Mr. Rogers draw children into the screen, suspending their disbelief, and can we emulate that in online worship?

At Saint Michael’s, the organ scholar records a prelude and postlude in the empty church with John as the videographer, allowing the congregants a rare glimpse of the organist who is normally hidden by the Rückpositiv of the great Beckerath organ. They also record at least two hymns, generally one verse for each, and show the text on the screen so “distance congregants” can sing along. John records a rehearsal track for an anthem that he sends to choir members who practice and record their part, and they send it back to John who stacks the tracks, tweaking the early or late notes as needed, and mixes the whole thing into a choir. This is far from perfect, and many people are unable to participate, especially elderly parishioners with no internet skills. We can suppose that powerful apps will be developed making all this possible without the need for each music director to reinvent the wheel.

A common concern is the future of choirs. On April 29, The Guardian reported that the German government had met with church leaders and agreed that when German churches open for worship in May, singing would be prohibited. The article noted that three quarters of the members of a church choir in Mount Vernon, Washington, fell ill and two died, and that fifty-nine of seventy-eight singers in the choir of Berlin’s Protestant cathedral contracted the virus. On March 8, the Amsterdam Gemengd Koor (mixed choir) gave a performance of J. S. Bach’s Saint John Passion in the Concertgebouw, the city’s famed concert hall. Of 130 singers, 102 contracted COVID-19 and four died. The American Choral Directors Association has issued an announcement to its membership stating that singers are “super spreaders” of the coronavirus because singers breathe more deeply than normal and expel breath at great velocity. A group of people singing may as well be sneezing on each other.

Andrew Scanlon said the reason the choir at Saint Paul’s in Greenville sings psalms so beautifully is that they do it all the time. It is in their blood. Will choirs have to wait years before being able to gather again? How much interest, proficiency, and experience will be lost?

Lemonade

We have no idea how long this will last. My family and I came to Maine thinking we would be here for a few weeks and have now been holding in place for over eight weeks. Given our usual lifestyle with two homes and a significant amount of business travel, this is the most consecutive nights I have spent in one place in nearly twenty years. The statistics of the epidemic as some states try opening selected businesses may indicate that we will be in this longer than we have yet imagined. From our seclusion, it is impossible to imagine when we might next enter a Broadway theater with twenty-inch wide seats and endless lines for the restrooms.

Most organists are employed by churches or universities. Although playing the organ seriously is a solitary venture, both types of institutions depend on people working in groups. Seminars, classrooms, staff meetings, faculty meetings, and especially choirs are important to the work of the organist. At the moment, the challenge of setting up distance learning and distance choral singing is taking more time for many people than the familiar weekday rehearsals and Sunday services. 

Once you have mastered and improved the techniques, will you have more time for personal projects? Is this your chance finally to learn those last eighteen pieces so you can say you have played all of Bach’s organ music? The Vierne symphonies? How about some of those pesky masterworks by Rachel Laurin or Jeanne Demessieux? Maybe it is time to finish and submit that article to The Diapason? Spend some more time with Beethoven’s piano music? Or admit it, you have always wanted to take the FAGO exam. Contact your chapter leadership and sign up. Maybe you were going to spend a week or two at conventions this summer. How often have you wished for a couple extra weeks to tackle something you have always wondered about? Guess what, kids, now’s the time.

When we meet on the other side, let me know how you did.

C. B. Fisk, Inc., Opus 116, Finney Chapel, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio (photo courtesy: C. B. Fisk, Inc.)

If a tree fell in the forest and there was no one there to hear it . . .

Suppose that we are sharing Christmas dinner. We are sitting with family and friends at a “groaning board” festooned with Granny’s stemware and china, ironed linen napkins, and the best silver, freshly polished. Red juices flow from the beef tenderloin as slices fall from the knife. Please pass the potatoes.

Over the clinking of silverware I happen to mention, “By the way, did you hear that all the churches will be closed for Easter?” Silence. “And not just Easter, Palm Sunday, and all of Holy Week.”

Shazam! I was right! To be truthful, I did not foresee it. No one did. According to Science Daily (April 9, 2020), by Christmas 2019, COVID-19 was more than a glimmer in the eye of a Chinese bat, but no one imagined that it would be spreading across the globe like wildfire a few months later. When my family and I left New York City for our house in Maine on March 14, there were fewer than 500 cases reported in the city. Three weeks later there were more than 20,000. Today, just one month later, there are over 110,000 confirmed cases with over 10,000 deaths in New York City alone. With the deadline for submissions to The Diapason six weeks before publication, writing these essays is no way to report the news. I am writing in mid-April, and you are reading in early June—plenty will have happened in the meantime. I hope some of it was good.

March 14 was the day Pope Francis announced that Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City would be closed to the public and Easter Masses would be celebrated with no congregation. Thousands of churches around the world shared the example. The internet was rich with video clips of worship being led by two or three people in an empty church or by individuals participating in orders of worship individually from their homes, iPhone videos spliced together for broadcast on Sunday morning. Thousands of brass players and singers lost income. Hundreds of thousands of volunteer choir members missed the high point of the season. And thousands of preachers delivered Resurrection messages via their laptop screens.

The New York Chautauqua Assembly was an adult education, entertainment, and social movement founded by 1874 for the purpose of bringing cultural experiences to rural communities. Started as a summer camp on the shore of Lake Chautauqua in western New York, it grew to have chapters across the country. President Theodore Roosevelt commented that the Chautauqua Assembly was the most American thing in America. In the June 1883 issue of the journal, The Chautauquan, the question was posed, “If a tree fell on an island where there were no human beings, would there be any sound?” The essay went on to say, “No. Sound is the sensation excited in the ear when the air or other medium is set in motion.” I am not smart enough to second guess such an august source of philosophy, but my crude understanding of the science of noise is that sound is created by the vibration of air stimulated by some physical source and exists as sound waves that travel whether or not there is a receptor. That rhetorical question is reminiscent of Neils Bohr challenging Albert Einstein to prove there is a moon without looking at it.

Because of the widespread shutdown in response to COVID-19, we are learning a lot about working empty rooms. Late-night television hosts are trying to get big laughs while sitting in their living rooms. Symphony orchestras are presenting live broadcast concerts in empty halls. And we hear the peace and word of the Lord by way of a MacBook Pro, a church’s organist leading Zoom worship from his piano at home. All performing artists know that audience reaction is palpable. When you are playing before an enthusiastic crowd, you can feel the excitement, even if you are sitting with your back to them, buried behind a massive Rückpositiv case. Many of my performing friends have identified this as a challenge during recording sessions. Does your performance sound, feel, and project differently when the audience is absent? How do you get that fire in your belly when playing for a few recording engineers and a roomful of microphones? Part of the magic of public worship is sharing the experience with the people around you, both old friends and strangers.

I love the notion that congregational singing led by a pipe organ is a physiological phenomenon in which all the producers of tone are using the same body of air as fuel. What the singers exhale goes into the blower intake, and a great circle is established. That is not happening on Zoom.

Alternative worship

This phrase brings fear into the hearts of many organists, conjuring up images of guitars, drum sets, and songs with four notes, four chords, four lines, four stanzas, and four tuned strings. Several years ago, I was assembling the restored tracker action of a nineteenth-century organ, working toward an Easter deadline. The church’s contemporary ensemble needed to practice, and I needed the time, so we agreed that I would just keep working quietly inside the organ while they rehearsed. One thing was certain: they needed to practice. Another thing was certain: it didn’t help. Their rehearsal technique was to barge through a song four or five times compounding the mistakes and slapping each other on the back as if they had just finished their set at Woodstock.

But alternative worship can mean many different things. A little over twenty years ago, I was working on a project on the campus of UCLA and staying in a twenty-room hotel on campus that was operated by students in the hotel management school. The icy phone calls during which my first wife and I were separated happened when I was in that room. It was not a fun time.

I was interested in hearing and seeing the mammoth organ at the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles and planned to attend worship there on Sunday, but I was on Eastern time and woke up at three in the morning. Organ preludes would start at 10:30 a.m., so I figured I had plenty of time for a drive up the coast, thinking that some wind off the ocean would ease the darkness I was feeling. I do not remember just where I wound up. A glance at a map suggests it must have been somewhere between Ventura and Santa Barbara where I noticed a group of at least fifty people gathered on a bluff staring at the ocean with binoculars. I was curious—what would bring so many people together so early in the morning—so I parked my car and walked toward the group.

Someone welcomed me in and explained what was going on. The Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society was counting migrating whales. There were tables set up with coffee and pastries. The people with binoculars were shouting out numbers while people with clipboards were recording them. There was a strong sense of comradery driven by a common purpose, and I quickly abandoned my plan of going to church. Standing by the ocean with a group of friendly people watching the glory of creation swim by was worshipful enough for me that day, lifting my spirits and clearing the mess from between my ears.

That singular Easter has just passed. We are all learning new ways to worship. Facebook is often a wormhole of self-satisfaction. I am not interested in your haircut or your magnificent meal. But I sure am interested in the dozens of posts I have read from colleagues sharing what it was like to participate in virtual Easter. Some showed clips of people dressed casually, leading a hymn from the piano in their living room, shifting to a pastor sitting at a desk leaning earnestly toward the screen speaking of the Resurrection “in this unusual time.” Others showed elaborately vested social-distancing priests at a high altar festooned with lilies, beeswax candles afire, a group of singers standing six feet apart, and the organist raising the dead with blazing trumpets.

Our rector in New York City spoke of taking a walk in abandoned lower Manhattan and seeing a small fleet of refrigerated trucks serving as temporary morgues behind a neighboring hospital. Realizing what they were and struck by the tragic loneliness of the scene, he stopped and offered a blessing. How’s that for an Easter message?

Resiliency

In the relative safety and serenity of our place in Maine, we have had two dramatic weather events in the last few days. In the afternoon of Holy Thursday, the wind came up, heavy rain turned to far heavier snow, the power went out, the generator came on, and the storm whipped through the night. On Good Friday, we woke to six inches of white wet glop, nearly impossible to walk on. Lichen-encrusted branches had fallen everywhere, and walking a few dozen yards up the driveway with a dog was like running a gauntlet with snow and debris falling from trees every few steps. The driveway is a half-mile long. It was grocery day, and I was planning to go to town. I put a saw in the car and spent a couple hours moving stuff off the road into the ditches.

The power was out all day, through Friday night, through Saturday night, and into Sunday afternoon, coming back on just as hundreds of colleagues would be launching into “the Widor” across the country. The head of our driveway is four miles down a rural road from the village, and the power lines snake through a maze of branches. There was a heavy ice storm shortly after we moved in the winter of 2001, and the power was out for nearly a week. That was when we installed the generator, and it has been a trusted part of the household since.

On Easter Monday, the rain started again, and the wind whipped up to gale force. The temperature was mild so there was no snow, but that storm stood out for the velocity and ferocity of the wind. The trees along the shore at the bottom of the yard were whipping wildly back and forth. After dinner I sat on the deck in the lee of the storm watching the crazy motion in the darkness and listening to the roar of the wind when it stopped. It did not lessen and die down. It just stopped. The roar became silence. The next morning, we confirmed that nothing new had fallen in the yard or on the driveway. After all that whipping about, no trees had fallen. Such resilience. Such strength. Such stability. A metaphor for facing life today.

In the 1964 film Mary Poppins, George Banks (played by David Tomlinson) works for the Dawes Tomes Mously Grubbs Fidelity Fiduciary Bank. He is the father of Jane and Michael, husband of Winifred, and Mary Poppins’s employer. He is a man of rigid routine. Early in the film, arriving home from the office, he sings:

I feel a surge of deep satisfaction

Much as a king astride his noble steed.

When I return from daily strife to hearth and wife,

How pleasant is the life I lead . . . .

. . .  I run my home precisely on schedule.

At 6:01, I march through my door.

My slippers, sherry, and pipe are due at 6:02,

Consistent is the life I lead.

The trouble is that while he is singing, Winifred is trying to interrupt to tell him the children are missing.

I can hear Wendy snickering. Cocktails here are at six-oh-oh. Dinner at eight-oh-oh. The routine is regular enough that Farley the Goldendoodle can tell time. “Paws up” on the bed at 6:30 in the morning. (That is the only time he ever gets on furniture.) A couple minutes before cocktails, he is sitting watching me. He gets an ice cube or two when I am fixing drinks and a dental “chewy” when we sit down with them. He depends on that routine as much as I do. We have laughed about it many times. Sometimes wryly.

But consistent no more. Our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter who live in Brooklyn, New York, came to Maine with us—and their dog. Remembering those refrigerated trucks, we are glad we can offer them shelter from the ravages of the city. We are four adults, a toddler, and two dogs, and the quiet, comfortable routine of two empty nesters is on sabbatical, if not just gone. We are five weeks into it now, and I have had some tough moments adjusting. But think of our Brooklynites. At least we are at home. We have lived in this house for almost twenty years, the longest either of us have lived in one place. We have clothes in the closets, unread books on the nightstands, extra toothbrushes in the drawers in the bathroom. It is familiar. They have left their home behind, all their daily routines, and all their stuff. We are coming up with new common daily rhythms, and the great news is that we are getting more time with our granddaughter than we could have imagined.

The new normal

I wonder when things will go back to normal. I wonder what the “new normal” will be. We were living in an unusual time before the start of the pandemic. Yesterday, CBS News reported that this is the first March since 2002 without a school shooting in the United States. Why? Simple. Schools are closed. Every significant arts organization in the country is closed. Thousands of orchestral musicians, actors, stagehands, ushers, and administrators are out of work. When the Metropolitan Opera laid off its entire staff with pay ending on March 31, I wondered if that fantastic assembly of talented skilled people could ever be gathered together again? But it is not as if disgruntled, they would take other jobs. There are no other jobs.

I can imagine sitting down again with trusted friends for a drink or a meal, maybe not so long from now. I can imagine taking an unessential drive to a park for a picnic. I can even imagine booking a hotel room and working on a job away from home. But knowing how I feel when I have to walk past an unmasked stranger in a grocery aisle, I cannot imagine walking through a foyer into a crowded theater or concert hall, exposing myself and those I love to whatever foolish indiscretion a seatmate might have committed. I assume I will go to a concert again, but I cannot imagine it yet. A vaccination against COVID-19 must be the greatest brass ring for medical research since polio.

The community of the church choir has always been a source of recreation and spiritual enhancement. In a video interview produced by the publisher J. W. Pepper in 2015, composer and conductor John Rutter says, “. . . choral music is not one of life’s frills. It is something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, our sense of community, and our souls.”¹ I first sang in a children’s choir in 1966 when I was ten years old. I have vivid memories from a few years later of using my new grown-up voice as a member of the adult choir singing Bach’s Cantata 140. (Va-ha-ke-het auf, Va-ha-ke-het auf, Va-ha-ke-het auf—two, three, one—ruft die Stimme!) I trust that future generations will have similar thrills, knowing the joy of singing closely with others.

In this column in the May 2017 issue of The Diapason, I wrote under the title, “Music in terrible times.” Wendy and I had just heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra play Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. I started that essay with Leonard Bernstein’s famous quote from the Vietnam era: “This will be our response to violence: to make music more intensively, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” I wrote of the siege of Leningrad in which more than a million people died, a battle that inspired Shostakovich’s masterpiece. I wrote of the bombing of Coventry, England, in 1940 from which came Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. I wrote of Stalag VIIIA where Olivier Messiaen was a prisoner of war and a sympathetic guard provided him with pencil and paper, allowing him to create Quartet for the End of Time.

Those great masterpieces are all the expressions of creative geniuses responding to vast human crises. The people who lived those days must have wondered if it would ever end. And horrible as they were, they all did end. Many people suffered, many people died, families were destroyed, and dreams were shattered. I trust that we will see each other at the symphony again. We will go to the theater again. We will go to ball games again. We will go sailing again. For now, we have to stay strong, take care of the people we love, and nourish the creativity within.

Now go practice while you have a chance.

Notes

1. You can see the interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm-Pm1FYZ-U.

Photo: John Cantrell, choirmaster and organist, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, New York, New York. John records rehearsal tracks for choir members, they practice and send in their videos, and he mixes them into a virtual choir, adds readings recorded by parishioners at home, sermon, and voilà! (Photo credit: Kathleen Cantrell)

Photo caption: The amphitheater at Epidaurus (photo credit: Carole Raddato, used through the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)

A break in the action

Last night, my wife Wendy and I watched the American Masters documentary, “Where Now Is,” about Michael Tilson Thomas, widely known as MTT, who recently retired as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. His tenure in San Francisco spanned nearly twenty-five years during which the orchestra grew in stature and popularity. I admire how a brilliant conductor can build an orchestra over time, nurturing the musicianship of the individual players and the strength of the ensemble. I consider the symphony orchestra to be one of the greatest achievements of human culture. It amazes me that all those musicians, each an accomplished soloist with the requisite ego, can come together on a hundred-foot stage and perform with such precision of ensemble.

MTT had a dramatic conducting debut at a very young age. On October 22, 1969, William Steinberg was conducting a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, opening the program with Brahms’s Second Symphony during which he fell ill. At the end of the piece, Steinberg left the stage, found MTT, assistant conductor of the BSO, said something like, “Put on a suit. You’re going to conduct,” and was taken to Roosevelt Hospital. 

The following morning, Harold Schoenberg of The New York Times reported, “Young Mr. Thomas, 24 years old, had his golden opportunity and made the most of it. He conducted Robert Starer’s Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, and Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel with an air of immense confidence and authority and showed that his confidence was not misplaced.” (Leonard Bernstein had a similar sudden debut. He was twenty-five when he filled in for the ailing Bruno Walter at the last minute, conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.)

MTT’s precocious brilliance kick-started his storied career as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the London Philharmonic before going to San Francisco. Perhaps his crowning achievement is the creation of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida. Founded in 1987, the New World Symphony is an orchestral academy whose mission statement is “to prepare highly gifted graduates of distinguished music programs for leadership roles in ensembles and orchestras around the world.” 

I was especially moved to watch MTT in private coaching sessions with the young musicians of the New World Symphony, as well as his rehearsal techniques with the full orchestra. Wendy and I commented to each other that he was always smiling. Of course, the editor of the film may have had some control over that, moments of ill temper left on the cutting room floor, but I don’t think so.

Frank Gehry was the principal architect for the spectacular New World Center, home of the New World Symphony, opened in Miami Beach in 2011. Hilariously, it was noted that Gehry was MTT’s babysitter when both were growing up in Los Angeles. 

Watching that film was bittersweet. It has been more than a year since we sat in a concert hall to hear an orchestra perform. The last live performance Wendy and I saw together was a disappointing new opera, four days before she left the city for our exile in Maine. (I followed her four days later.) MTT’s enthusiasm and that of the many colleagues we saw in orchestras and in separate interviews was infectious and a poignant reminder of all that we have lost in the last year. As I remember our life in the city, I think of the many thrilling plays, musicals, and concerts we have seen. I think of the stagehands, ushers, electricians, carpenters, costume designers, and actors whose livelihood vanished overnight. A quick look at my calendar shows that I had dinner with a colleague in a posh restaurant in lower Manhattan on Thursday, March 12, 2020, the same day that forty-two Broadway theaters, countless off-Broadway venues, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and many other cultural venues closed. It first seemed that those places would reopen in a few weeks, but that was not to be.

Weathering the storm

In the December 2015 issue of The Diapason, I wrote of our first visit with our grandson Samuel, four days after his birth. In that essay, I wondered what life would bring him, I looked forward to being able to share cultural experiences with him and his older brother Benjamin, and I wondered what their educations would be like. I remembered the goitered and aptly named Mrs. Louden who taught music in the public schools when I was a kid, making twice-a-week visits to each classroom, braying simple songs. She drew staves on the blackboard with that cool five-gang chalk holder and taught us musical notation. “Every good boy deserves fudge,” but come to think of it, I do not remember what the girls got. I don’t think that is going to happen for them in public school.

As I thought about that precious young life, I could not have imagined that he’d spend his fifth birthday on lockdown, or that Chris would take leave from his job as a high school teacher, develop a curriculum for approval by the school principal, and home-school his sons so they would not have to spend all of Covid-tide glued to screens. I could not have imagined that they would have to be isolated from their friends, many of whom they can see from the windows of their condominium apartment or learn to wear masks whenever they leave their home.

I wonder what it will be like for them when the coast is clear and they can re-socialize. Will they experience growing pains as they reconnect with their pals? Will it be hard for them to return to classroom learning? We all wonder together what the “new normal” will be, even as we look forward to returning to a former life.

Rusty

On February 3, 2021, Gregory Wallace and Pete Muntean reported on CNN that airline pilots who had been idled by reduced air travel during the pandemic are finding that they are rusty when they return to the air and making errors managing their aircraft. Early in their article they wrote, “‘This was my first flight in nearly three months,’ one pilot wrote in a June report explaining why he or she neglected to turn on the critical anti-icing system. ‘I placed too much confidence in assuming it would all come back to me as second nature.’” A few paragraphs down, there was a bold heading, “Boy, was I wrong!”

Watching MTT lead rehearsals had me wondering what it will take to rebuild musical ensembles when the spread of the virus is contained. A symphony orchestra becomes great because its members play together all the time. They are in rehearsal and concerts five or six days a week, and they learn the musical intuitions as well as the quirks and habits of their fellow musicians. A violinist might think to herself, “He’s going to flub that note at the page-turn,” and compensate subconsciously. A second clarinet is inspired by the principal to stretch that phrase just a touch. How much rejuvenation will it take to rebuild the intimate ensemble, that greatest of collegial achievements? Musicians often refer to a sloppy performance as a “train wreck.” I hope “plane crash” does not become part of that lexicon.

Will a rusty theater electrician fail to tighten a bolt allowing a light to fall during a play?¹ Will actors and dancers step on each other’s toes? Will they have crises of confidence? Performance is a tricky thing that blends pedagogy, intuition, memory, expression, and confidence. Remember Harold Schoenberg writing that MTT conducted with “an air of immense confidence and authority and showed that his confidence was not misplaced.” I love that his confidence was not misplaced. Any performer knows exactly what that means and so do astute listeners, as in, “He had no business being that sure of himself.” I know I have played concerts during which my confidence was misplaced.

§

Human creativity reached a zenith in the last centuries before the birth of Christ. The marvelous architecture of ancient Rome and Greece, the literature of Sophocles and Euripides, and the mathematical understanding of Archimedes and Euclid all bear witness to the genius of that age. And don’t forget my hero Pythagoras (570 BC–495 BC) who discovered the musical overtone series, defined musical intervals, and developed systems of tuning.

The Sacred Triangle of Greece comprises the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the Temple of Athena Parthenos (the Parthenon) in Athens, and the Temple of Athena Aphaia on the island of Aegina. The three sites were built within a few years of each other around 500 BC and form a perfect isosceles triangle, a hundred miles on each side. How did they plot that triangle when one leg crosses mountains and the other two cross bodies of water? Celestial navigation was first practiced by the Phoenecians around 2000 BC, and in the second century BC, Hipparchus, a Greek astronomer, developed the concept of longitude, assuming a spherical earth and dividing it into 360 degrees.

Several years ago, visiting our daughter’s in-laws in Athens, Greece, her father-in-law Christos, an architect, took us to visit the Sanctuary of Asklepios, the god of medicine, at Epidaurus, about ninety miles from Athens. We have probably visited a dozen Greek amphitheaters, but the one at Epidaurus, built in the fourth century BC and seating 14,000, takes the cake. The immense structure is a section of a perfect sphere that produces whispering acoustics in a vast space and has remained perfectly level for over two thousand years. How did they do that without a laser-level? How did they know the ground would be that stable for millennia? How did they plot that perfect sphere?

Christos told how he worked for a large architectural firm that held retreats at that site, when the head of the firm posed the rhetorical question, “Who was the bastard who burned the library at Alexandria?” That library was a depository of human knowledge recorded in hundreds of thousands of scrolls, estimated to be the equivalent of 100,000 books. Its destruction was part of the decline of intellectual activity that led to the Dark Ages, which ran roughly from 700 AD until the thirteenth century. It was a time of ignorance and war, and as populations increased faster than medical care developed, the era was rife with disease and pandemics such as the Black Death.

Humankind broke out of the Dark Ages into a time of explosive creativity. In the world of music, we remember the remarkable pipe organ in Sion, Switzerland (approximately 1390), Guillame DuFay (1397–1474), Johannes Ockeghem (died 1497), and Josquin des Prez (died 1521). Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) had a lot to say in the arts and sciences, Titian (1490–1576) and Michelangelo (1475–1564) brought the visual arts to dizzying heights. 

§

Our year of pandemic is a hiccup compared to the Dark Ages, but just as the Renaissance bloomed out of despair, I think we are going to see an explosion of creativity when orchestras can return to the stage and rehearsal room, when theaters can open and host dramatic expression, when museums can welcome in crowds hungry to learn, and when we can gather with friends before or after a concert to revel in the thrill of creativity and the thrall of our lasting companionship.

While Facebook is full of flaws and has certainly made it easy for people to stir up trouble, I have loved witnessing the “creativity in exile” of many friends and colleagues. People have been sharing their Covid-tide projects, learning new literature, writing new music, finding ways to create ensembles online, all to keep the arts alive. I have seen performances of Bach cantatas on Zoom that project the intimacy of musical relationships and love of the music. If those great pieces can be brought alive remotely, I cannot wait to hear how musicians interact when they can gather in person again.

I have been thinking especially about church choirs. In my days as a church musician, choir night was a highlight of the week. Thinking of my own workload and availability of volunteer time, I appreciated the ability of people to carve out that time. Many of the members of choirs I led had young children, so their participation depended on the willingness of a spouse to be at home making supper, supervising homework, and making sure the kids got cleaned up and to bed on time. And each Thursday evening, as many as a dozen choir members came to our house for BYOB after rehearsal, singing around the piano, ordering pizza, building a loving social group as part of their volunteer service to their church.

Those deep and lasting friendships had everything to do with the quality of their music making. Chatting about the music over drinks after a rehearsal is a big part of ensemble building, as are shared visions, shared life experiences, shared opinions, and shared jokes. A choir that can laugh together sings better together. I remember an evening when we were working on a particularly difficult passage in William Byrd’s five-part (with two tenors) setting of Ave, Maria, when in frustration, one of the tenors burst out with “Oy vey, Maria,” and the choir fell into the kind of unstoppable laughter that makes your eyes water and your belly hurt. It took a few more readings of the piece before we could pass that measure without cracking up, but the performance was the richer for it.

Tens of thousands of devoted choir members are missing all that these days. I encourage those of you who lead choirs to be nurturing your groups, maintaining those social and musical relationships in any way possible, and helping the volunteers to look forward to returning to the marvelous work of making music for the church. Won’t it be great to see the vested choir waiting at the back of the church as you start that processional hymn with a room full of people?

It’s not a train.

There’s a glimmer at the end of the tunnel. Vaccines are spreading across the globe, and they are proving to be effective. While most large cultural institutions are still closed or operating with significantly reduced schedules and capacities, there is a sense that we may be over the hump. I know I am eager to get back on the road and resume my former pattern of visiting the organs that I am dealing with. As I correspond with so many of you, I am longing for the time when I can call and say, “I’ll be in town next week, can we meet?” And I am looking forward to witnessing the celebrations as orchestras get back to work and our beloved church choirs can be free to have their fun. Be sure you’re ready, and when the time comes, give it all you’ve got.

Notes

1. I was once sitting in a concert hall with my first wife, waiting for a friend’s voice recital to start, when a heavy stage light crashed in front of the piano, right where the singer would have stood. The falling light was enough to cancel the concert. This was when my children were young, and we got home far earlier than expected to find the babysitter on the couch making out with her boyfriend. “Hi, this is Jimmie.”

Joyce Johnson Robinson is a past editor of The Diapason.

Photo caption: Paul Jacobs stands between George Rau and Susan Woodard, his high school organ and piano teachers, respectively. The ceremony was for the honorary doctorate given to Jacobs by Washington & Jefferson College in 2017.

Paul Jacobs’s name first appeared in the November 1998 issue of The Diapason, which noted that he won first prize in the Young Professional Division of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition in its inaugural year. His marathon performance in Chicago of the organ works of Olivier Messiaen was described in detail by Frank Ferko (“An Extraordinary Musical Odyssey: Paul Jacobs’ Messiaen Marathon,” The Diapason, April 2002, Vol. 93, No. 4, pages 14–15). Over a decade ago, The Diapason presented an interview with Jacobs, which focused on his development as a musician and his views of music within American culture (“Challenging the Culture: A Conversation with Paul Jacobs,” The Diapason, February 2006, Vol. 97, No. 2, pages. 22–25).

Jacobs has become a vocal champion of the organ and of art music, as evidenced by interviews and articles in such publications as The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He is the only organ soloist to have won a Grammy Award, and is recognized as a musician of unique stature through his performances in each of the fifty United States and around the world, as well as his performances with major orchestras, including Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony, to name just a few. Jacobs also serves as chair of the organ department at the Juilliard School in Manhattan. Last season Jacobs toured in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

We were able to discuss his work and thoughts during a visit of his with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in May of 2018, and present an edited version of his comments here.

The Grammy

Joyce Johnson Robinson: Your awards include a Grammy award—the first and only organ soloist to receive a Grammy award.¹

Paul Jacobs: The Grammy was entirely unexpected. I was shocked by the nomination and utterly convinced that it would never materialize.

You didn’t even go to the ceremony.

It would have been difficult to attend, because I was performing with an orchestra the same weekend and didn’t want to cancel; besides, I wouldn’t receive it [the award] anyway. Well, I was wrong about that! This honor was something good not only for me, but for the entire organ profession, for organ playing to be recognized by such a mainstream institution.

Do you think it’s led to additional opportunities, or brought more attention?

On some level, perhaps. But I don’t believe that any one accolade or accomplishment is a silver bullet, which is what I tell my students. Young musicians, understandably, want to be successful and recognized immediately for their work, but there isn’t just one ingredient that’s going to make this happen—one has to commit for the long haul and be patient. Intense dedication to the art form—pursuing it for the right reasons—is crucial, because this isn’t always an easy or lucrative path. But if you genuinely love music, it will sustain you through difficult, even discouraging, times. If you tenaciously persist in the journey, your vocation to music will eventually bear fruit.

People have approached me over the years—many who have stable work and a healthy paycheck—and expressed some degree of envy that I can make a living doing what I actually love to do. It’s a reminder that shouldn’t be taken lightly: making beautiful music for others is a rare joy and a privilege. Be grateful for the music that has been bequeathed to us, that is under our care to pass to future generations. We’re the custodians of timeless works of art and must be fully dedicated to studying and sharing them with the world in any way that we can, large and small.

Collaborations

How did this all get going with orchestras?²

Oh, I’ve always had a strong desire to collaborate with other musicians. The organ can be—but need not be—a lonely instrument. There’s an abundance of fine repertoire for organ and various combinations of instruments. As a student, I played a good deal of chamber music, so much so that, as an undergraduate, I was inspired to double-major in both organ and harpsichord, primarily for the opportunity to play continuo. This cultivated relationships with many musicians who weren’t organists, which has always been important to me. As time progressed, I was increasingly invited by important orchestras to perform with them, something that has brought tremendous satisfaction.

You’ve worked with such important conductors as Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Franz Welser-Most. Many conductors haven’t worked very closely with organ soloists. Is this correct?

That’s right. Let me consider how to best phrase this—my desire is for organists to be taken as seriously as other musicians. But we must earn respect; it doesn’t come automatically. And we have to deliver at the highest artistic level—consistently, every time—while always remaining flexible to the fluid circumstances of live performance. We also have to be easy to work with, personally speaking.

Several conductors have indicated to me that they’ve had less than flattering experiences with organists in the past. Sometimes organists do not help themselves or the art form, which is marginalized enough already. I think it’s crucial that organists become more self-aware of the quality of their playing and how they relate (or not) to other people, particularly those not in their own field.

What do you think about the growth of your work with orchestras, and these new concertos and pieces that are being written for organ and orchestra? Do you see this starting to spread, with other organists doing this? Right now it seems to be just you.

I know, it’s true; but this is also something that I’ve worked very hard to achieve. None of this has occurred without extraordinary effort, not to mention occasional frustrations. To begin with, it takes a bold willingness to want to understand the world of orchestras—entirely different from the organ community—its structure and needs, and what its audiences expect. And usually these audiences do not comprise the same people who attend organ recitals.

Additionally, organists must be capable of overcoming any idiosyncrasies of a given instrument, quickly overriding any problems, which are bound to arise given the non-standardized nature of our instrument and everything that this entails. Frankly, the conductor and hundred or so musicians on stage don’t give a hoot about the very legitimate problems organists face; an organist must simply be able to deliver with the same ease and confidence as they do, no questions asked.

Some of the new works that you’ve premiered, such as Wayne Oquin’s Resilience, were written for you or with you in mind.³

Some of them were, yes. I’m always looking for composers who are eager to write effectively for the organ and encourage my students to do the same. To survive, an art form must evolve and each generation must contribute to it; therefore, it’s important to encourage living composers—composers of our time—to consider the instrument and its unique expressive potential. Maybe not every piece of new music is going to stand the test of time, but a few will. And sometimes contemporary music connects with certain listeners in a way that the old warhorses do not.

And what about future recordings?

Recently released on the Hyperion label is a recording made with the Utah Symphony of Saint-Saëns’ ever-popular “Organ” Symphony. Also to be released later next season on the Harmonia Mundi label is Samuel Barber’s Toccata Festiva, performed in Switzerland with the Lucerne Symphony. And I’m excited by another recording project with Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony, one which will include Hindemith’s rarely heard Organ Concerto, Horatio Parker’s Organ Concerto, and Wayne Oquin’s Resilience.

International Touring

Having performed on five continents, including his recent European tour, Jacobs traveled to China to perform and to serve as president of the jury for the country’s first-ever international organ festival and competition, held at the Oriental Arts Centre in Shanghai.

What are your impressions of the organ world in China?

There is an exciting and increasing curiosity about the organ among Chinese musicians and audiences alike. Something that I experienced in Shanghai was that the audiences comprise primarily young people—to identify gray hairs is actually tricky! Children and their parents and young adults routinely fill the concert halls in China.

Can you explain that?

Not entirely, but it’s inspiring to witness the emergence of an organ culture in the world’s most populous country. Just as we’ve seen in other Asian countries in recent decades, now we observe something similar in China. Where it will lead, however, we do not know. But there is definitely some very genuine interest in the organ; the Shanghai Conservatory just instituted its first classical organ major degree. Of course, a problem is that there are few churches to employ trained organists. Nonetheless, it was encouraging to witness what is happening on the other side of the world, and to experience firsthand Chinese culture, which has retained some traditions and values that we’ve lost or forgotten in the West—civility, a profound respect for one’s elders and teachers, common courtesy and decorum.

Surprisingly, I actually returned to New York after a sixteen-hour flight feeling somewhat relaxed, and this sense of calm remained with me for a few days. Shanghai’s population is a staggering twenty-three million people, and New York, by contrast, is a mere eight million. Yet, in many ways, Shanghai felt calmer than New York, or many other large American cities, for that matter. Despite the tremendous activity of Shanghai, one isn’t bombarded by honking horns or aggressive pedestrians or motorists. Rather, a Confucian attitude seems to pervade daily life. The Chinese just find their place in society and work into it. Overall, it strikes me as a quieter, more serene culture, despite such a large population.

You’ve done a good deal of international touring, including in Europe. In your experience, how do the American and European organ cultures relate to one another?

Of course, I love Europe. How could one not? Its culture has given the world Dante, Rembrandt, and Wagner. And there’s an undeniable indebtedness that American organists, in particular, acknowledge toward Europe—the spectacular historic instruments and the impressive traditions and performers that have emerged over generations. However, I think we have reached a point in time when American organists need not feel subservient toward the Europeans; rather, we should view ourselves as friendly colleagues and peers. Yes, we can learn from them, but they can also learn from us.

Some American buildings in which organs are situated might be more modest in scale than the imposing, reverberant cathedrals of Europe. This could be just one reason that reflexively prompts some organists to esteem what occurs on the other side of the Atlantic more favorably. It’s true, some American churches or halls might possess a different acoustic or aesthetic character, but this doesn’t mean that the organs within them are any less valuable or effective, if they’re used properly. A Cavaillé-Coll and a Skinner can be equally magnificent, but the organist must be willing and able to play them quite differently. Today in the world, some of the finest organists—and organbuilders—are Americans. And America continues, rightly, to recognize extraordinary European talent; now, we’d appreciate a similar open-mindedness.

Teaching

Paul Jacobs remains the chair of the organ department at the Juilliard School, a position he assumed at age 26, one of the youngest faculty appointments in the school’s history. Former students of his now occupy notable positions. In academia, Isabelle Demers, noted concert organist, serves as organ professor at Baylor University; Christopher Houlihan, also an active concert organist, holds the Distinguished Chair of Chapel Music at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut; David Crean serves as professor of organ at Wright State University and is also a radio host.

Students of Jacobs also hold positions at prominent churches: in New York City, Michael Hey is associate organist at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Benjamin Sheen is associate organist at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, Ryan Jackson is director of music at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, and Raymond Nagem serves as associate organist of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine; in Orange County, California, David Ball is associate organist at Christ Cathedral (formerly Crystal Cathedral). Other Jacobs students include Greg Zelek, the recently appointed principal organist of the Madison Symphony and curator of the Overture Concert Series in Madison, Wisconsin, noted performing and recording artist Cameron Carpenter, and Chelsea Chen, a successful concert organist and composer.⁴ In addition to Juilliard, for the past six years Jacobs has also directed the Organ Institute of the Oregon Bach Festival.

In your teaching, have you noticed any changes in students over the years, either in the way they’re prepared, or outlooks?

Yes. The students with whom I work tend to be less naive, perhaps, than when I was their age. Part of this, perhaps, comes from their experience of living in New York City. And I wonder, too, if technology has had something to do with this—social media and interconnectedness, everything out in the open, no secrets kept. Many young organists are savvy, perceptive, and hard-working. But I’ve also found it necessary to stimulate discussion about the problems young organists face, some of which they themselves could help resolve. For example, it’s my belief is that there’s an unfortunate separation between the organ world and the broader world of classical music, which is something that I’ve attempted to rectify through my own work, and strongly support my students to do the same. Many of them are already making a positive impact. Another imposing hurdle organists face beyond “organ versus classical music” is the larger cultural problem (at least as I see it) of the enveloping secularization of our society, which I believe will continue to increase the already formidable challenges to the arts, and certainly to classical musicians—not only to organists whose primary employer happens to be religious institutions. This, of course, is an all-encompassing topic, one that can elicit impassioned points of view; nevertheless, it needs to be discussed openly and honestly, especially by dedicated young musicians.

Beyond the decline of traditional church music, what do you think are some of the challenges facing young organists?

I am concerned by the inward-looking attitude that some organists have adopted. There is a sense of parochialism that often suffuses the profession, and it’s time to break out of that mold. In some quarters of teaching, the primary concern is that the students learn the “correct” way to play and interpret music from a panel of “experts.” How stifling! Many young organists spend their entire careers seeking their approval, at the same time showing disregard and even disdain for other dedicated musicians who might choose to do things a bit differently. The world of organists seems, at times, to be made up of fiefdoms, each guarding its own camp. There’s often a lack of unity, which contributes to a certain amount of unnecessary infighting. All this makes it difficult to reel in new lovers for organ music.

The insularity of our profession is a problem. This needs to be said. Too many organists are stuck exclusively in the organ world. To my mind organists need to step out of the organ loft. We should regularly visit museums, attend the opera, the symphony, and chamber music concerts, befriending other musicians who are not organists. Read literature, explore architecture, painting, and philosophy. I feel the need for the organ world academy to open its churchly doors onto a broader landscape that includes all of these things.

I recall hearing my high school organ teacher, George Rau, who studied at Fontainebleau one summer with Nadia Boulanger, say that, in the past, it was almost expected for serious organists to go and study with a European master, and that would “validate” them. But this is not the case anymore. Of course, I would never discourage a student from spending time in Europe—this would be very valuable. It’s simply no longer obligatory, however, in the formation of a fine musician.

We now have our own master teachers.

Yes, and master builders. America has its own impressive, rich tradition, so there’s no reason to possess an inferiority complex, subconsciously or otherwise. We now boast of some of the most versatile organists and organbuilders in the world, pursuing different styles, doing different things, but many with the highest degree of artistic integrity.

Further thoughts

What’s next on your agenda?

I anticipate another exciting season of music-making, of course, always continuing to expand my repertoire. In addition to the recording projects previously mentioned, I anticipate offering a special series of French recitals in New York, then joining several American orchestras as well as ones in Germany and Poland. I’m also looking forward to playing the organ at Maison de la Radio in Paris and dedicating the Hazel Wright organ at the new Christ Cathedral in California, among other adventures.

Do you get any break during the summer?

Yes. There are pockets during the summer that are a bit lighter, thankfully, particularly in August—but much of this period is spent preparing repertoire for the upcoming season. At least these days are not so rigorously structured; the hours can be taken more leisurely. But I long for uninterrupted time to read, reflect, and think about life. (Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov has been on my reading list for some time!) It’s tempting, when the gerbil wheel is spinning faster and faster, to neglect one’s spiritual growth. But I believe that a true creative artist must take special care of his or her soul, which is different from a person’s physical and mental health.

How do you recharge? Do you go home to Pennsylvania?

Yes, I definitely spend some time there, and it will be refreshing to be with family, both immediate and extended, as well as old friends. I remain deeply fond of the outdoors, taking long walks in the woods, which purifies the spirit and provides time for thought, reflection, and inspiration. I don’t think it’s our job to “change the world”—whatever that means, anyway; it’s impossible, in fact. But I do believe it’s our duty to live in such a way that sets an edifying example to those whom we encounter each day, bestowing in our personal interactions an increased love for music and sensitivity to beauty in life. This we must do.

Thomas Murray, John Weaver, Lionel Party, as well as going back to my high school teachers, George Rau and Susan Woodard—they’ve each set a sterling example, not only regarding excellence in musicianship, but also in how to treat people with sincerity and empathy, never losing sight of the larger picture. Our ultimate goal shouldn’t be mere professional success. I remain exceedingly grateful to have been influenced by these generous and caring individuals, and hopefully I succeed at passing along similar wisdom to my own students.

I remember saying to John Weaver at some point, “You know, John, I’ll never be able to repay you for all that you’ve done for me.” And he said, “Well, you can’t, so don’t try. But do it for somebody else.” That’s the way to look at it. We’ll never be able to adequately repay our mentors, but they don’t care. They just hope we will pass it on.

Notes

1. In 2011 Paul Jacobs received a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra) for his recording of Messiaen’s Livre du Saint-Sacrement (Naxos), the first time that a solo recording of classical organ music has been recognized by the Recording Academy. Other awards include the Arthur W. Foote Award of the Harvard Musical Association in 2003, and an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, Pennsylvania, in 2017.

2. Jacobs has also collaborated with dramatic soprano Christine Brewer; touring together, they also recorded Divine Redeemer (Naxos 8.573524).

3. Jacobs’s work with new music includes premieres of works by Christopher Rouse, Samuel Adler, Mason Bates, Michael Daugherty, Wayne Oquin, Stephen Paulus, Christopher Theofanidis, and John Harbison, among others.

In October 2017, Jacobs, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Nézet-Séguin presented the East Coast premiere of Wayne Oquin’s Resilience for organ and orchestra. Commissioned by the Pacific Symphony as part of their American Music Festival, Resilience received its world premiere on February 4, 2016, at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Costa Mesa, California. The work is a 13-minute call and response between organ and orchestra and is dedicated to Paul Jacobs and conductor Carl St. Clair.

4. On November 22, 2014, Jacobs and his current and former students from Juilliard presented the complete organ works of J. S. Bach in an 18-hour marathon concert at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan, presented by the country’s largest classical radio station, WQXR. Many of the time slots in the six-hour event sold out.

Joyce Johnson Robinson is a past editor of The Diapason.

Greg Zelek, named one of The Diapason’s 20 under 30 Class of 2016 (see The Diapason, May 2016, page 31), was the first organist to be awarded Juilliard’s Kovner Fellowship (a merit-based scholarship award that covers the full estimated cost of study at The Juilliard School). Zelek received bachelor’s and master’s degrees and an Artist Diploma from Juilliard, studying with Paul Jacobs. Since September 2017, Zelek has been in Madison, Wisconsin, serving as the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s principal organist and the Elaine and Nicholas Mischler Curator of the Overture Concert Organ, a three-manual, seventy-two-rank Klais instrument that is entirely movable in one large chamber. Prior to holding this position, Zelek has served as organist and music director at several churches in Florida and New York, and spent summers in Spain. He has logged numerous performances with symphonies in Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Wisconsin, and has presented recitals throughout the United States.

Zelek is certainly reaching the career aspirations mentioned in his 20 under 30 essay: “to broaden the audience for the organ, popularizing an instrument that is often misunderstood even by other classical musicians” and to present it “in atypical performances and collaborating with other artists.” He has made significant strides toward these goals, notwithstanding the challenges posed by a virus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. We talked with Greg Zelek to find out the details.

Describe in brief what your position with the Madison Symphony Orchestra entails.

I am the principal organist of the Madison Symphony Orchestra (MSO) and hold the endowed position of the Elaine and Nicholas Mischler Curator of the Overture Concert Organ. I perform with the symphony whenever there is an organ part in a symphonic work and have also been the soloist for organ concertos. As the curator of the Overture Concert Organ, I perform in and plan our organ series (as well as a summer concert series) by selecting and hiring guest artists, organize events for the Friends of the Overture Concert Organ (FOCO), who help support all organ programming, and handle scheduling of organ maintenance. I succeeded Sam Hutchison, who retired in 2017, and am forever grateful to him for the organ program in Madison that he helped shape.

What special things have you done in your position that were new?

As I always do at my live performances, I try to make the event an all-around experience that not only showcases the instrument and repertoire, but also entertains the audience with personal interaction throughout the concert. I began forming relationships with many music aficionados in Madison, and this has allowed for growth of the program and greater enthusiasm for the organ and our performances.

At the annual Free Community Carol Sing, a December holiday event for which you played, the attendance reached a new level in 2019. It had never previously been necessary to open the top levels of the theater to accommodate the crowd. What’s the secret to your success?

The Carol Sing is an incredible tradition that attracts around 1,500 people from all ages to sing Christmas carols accompanied by the organ. I really appreciate everyone in our audience, and I think this mutual admiration from both those in attendance and the performer makes concerts and events much more memorable and entertaining for everyone.

I always open and close the Carol Sing with solo organ works that demonstrate the full scope of our instrument, and I think it’s a great opportunity to share repertoire with children and their parents who otherwise might have never heard the organ before. When everyone in the family can leave with a smile on their face after a concert, you know they’ll be returning (and bringing some family friends).

When the Covid pandemic struck in March of 2020, how did things change for you?

It was difficult to see what exactly we would be doing at the start of the 2020–2021 season, since so much was up in the air immediately following the start of the pandemic. One advantage of playing the pipe organ is that you can perform an entire program without anyone else on stage (which was essential with the social-distancing guidelines in place). I planned two virtual concerts in the fall with the hope that this might give our audience members something to look forward to since there was nothing going on at the start of the new season.

As soon as we began advertising our two virtual streams (I performed the first, and my former organ teacher at Juilliard, Paul Jacobs, performed the second), we had over 1,600 households register and watch the events. While these virtual events are not an equal substitute for our live concerts, they provided the advantage of being able to share music from Overture Hall with a wider community beyond just Madison.

I planned one final virtual event in the spring to close the season with my friend and trumpet player, Ansel Norris, who I had the opportunity to perform with in Naples, Florida, back in March 2020. That Naples performance turned out to be my last live concert before the pandemic, and it seemed appropriate to close our virtual season alongside Ansel, who coincidentally is originally from Madison. It was wonderful to see the majority of the households that registered for these three concerts return to their seats for live concerts at Overture Hall for the 2021–2022 organ season.

What else did you do during the 2020–2021 Covid year?

Apart from the Madison Symphony Virtual Organ Series events, I performed alongside the Madison Symphony’s Maestro, John DeMain, in a virtual Christmas concert that showcased the Klais’s versatility for both solo and accompanied works that was viewed by over 6,000 households. I also had the opportunity to perform at some other venues throughout the pandemic.

I performed my first live concert in over a year with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra in a concert for organ and brass ensemble in January 2021. This was my fourth year performing in the event, and it was surreal to play in front of a socially distanced but live audience after so many months away. I also recorded a virtual concert from Longwood Gardens with my friend and fellow Juilliard alum, cellist Thomas Mesa. I then returned to perform Rheinberger’s Second Organ Concerto with the Jacksonville Symphony before another live audience at the end of March 2021.

Things have now opened up. What items are added to your calendar?

We have a very exciting upcoming 2022–2023 organ season at Overture Hall, with performances by guest artists, as well as myself. The Jacksonville Symphony has also invited me back to again be the artist-in-residence for their organ program that is in its second year that showcases their Bryan Concert Organ (a Casavant instrument in Jacoby Hall). Many of the canceled events from the start of the pandemic for which I was booked were rescheduled for both this past 2021–2022 season and this upcoming Fall.

Let’s return to your student years. You grew up in Miami and began piano lessons at age seven. How were you attracted to the organ?

I attended Epiphany Catholic School in Miami, Florida, where they built an entirely new church structure around a magnificent Ruffatti instrument during my time as a student there. Tom Schuster was hired to be the organist, and I began taking piano lessons with him. I then went on to attend New World School of the Arts High School as a pianist, studying with Ciro Fodere. As I moved into high school, I wanted some cash to be able to take my girlfriend out to dinner and the movies, and Tom had said that I could get a church job that paid if I started studying the organ. When you’re a kid, $5,000 a year seems like a million dollars, so I began taking organ lessons with Tom, and here I am, however many years later, doing it professionally!

And you even had a summer job in Spain.

Each summer, we would visit family for a month in a tiny town called Ramales de la Victoria, which is nestled in the mountains of the north of Spain. I would play the Sunday Mass there, which not only helped me grow in appreciation of the music, but also of a very different culture. It also helped me keep up my Spanish that I grew up speaking as a kid, and that I’m still fluent in today.

Your college and graduate work has all been done at Juilliard. What led you to decide to remain at Juilliard for all of your training?

My former organ teacher, Paul Jacobs, is the reason that I chose Juilliard, and there was no reason to go anywhere else once I was there! Paul’s unique vision of the profession made me believe that I might be able to venture outside of the traditional path for organists and do things a little differently. Through his extensive experience with orchestras around the world and his vigorous dedication to making the organ an integral part of the classical music scene, I was motivated to work intensely, set high standards for musical excellence, and develop my own individual style of concertizing. Paul’s passion and work ethic is a constant inspiration to me, and I feel a responsibility to pass on my own passion with anyone and everyone who attends an organ performance.

Was it difficult to adjust to New York City?

I recall Paul Jacobs not allowing me to talk as much as I wanted to in my first couple of lessons, and so I was forced to play (and thus reveal that I was probably less prepared than I should have been). It quickly became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to talk my way out of lessons, and so I really started working and honing my craft. As soon as I realized what it took to learn and internalize music and started memorizing my music for our weekly organ class performances throughout the semester, New York was a dream environment for an aspiring musician. The level of talent in NYC is so high, and it really inspired me to look beyond my life as a student and try to imagine what might be possible in this challenging but very rewarding profession. I then went on to get my master’s and Artist Diploma from Juilliard as well.

Attendance at Madison’s organ programs has increased greatly during your tenure—tripling. How do you account for that?

There is nothing more contagious than enthusiasm, and I hope that I exude enthusiasm whenever I perform. I hear so many organists talk about how they go about selecting music for their concerts (“always include something your audience wants to hear, but make sure you play something that they need to hear”), and I have a very different take on this idea. I generally perform the music that I want to share and feel the responsibility of convincing the audience that they should want to hear it too.

The more I have gotten to know the audience in Madison, the more I feel that they trust me to play the best music and to bring in the top guest artists. There is constant pressure to perform at the highest level, and this is inspiring to me. I also hope that I’m a fairly relatable person. I tend to talk about how my parents don’t know anything about classical music, how my mom thought that giving me a sip of her Manhattan would help calm me before an organ competition, and how my dad may be asleep halfway through my concert. And these types of stories (all true, by the way) tend to make audiences feel comfortable and more attentive to the beautiful music that I have the privilege of performing.

When I first arrived in 2017, we had 224 FOCO households (Friends of the Overture Concert Organ), and this past pandemic year we had over 550. My last organ concert at Overture Hall this past May 2022 had over 1,400 audience members, and I’m proud that we’ve been able to create excitement around our instrument and program in Madison. The Madison community at large is most appreciative and supportive of the arts, and they have welcomed me with open arms. I have made some extremely close relationships in a short period of time, and this is a testament to how gracious and loving the people of Madison really are.

How’s the Klais?

There is something unique about playing a concert hall instrument, and the immediacy of sound is both electrifying and thrilling. Everyone in Madison is so proud to have a world-class organ in our César Pelli-designed concert hall, especially considering that there are many cities larger in size than Madison, such as New York City, that don’t. The instrument was built by Klais in 2004 and gifted to the MSO by Pleasant T. Rowland (a Madison native and the founder of the American Girl books and brand). With over 4,000 pipes and 63 stops, there are countless sounds to choose from, and it really brings all different styles of music to life.

The MSO website (madisonsymphony.org) mentions “Pop-up Events.” Can you tell us about these?

When I first arrived, the Madison Symphony Orchestra League asked if I would play for a Party of Note, where they sell a certain number of tickets to an event that supports the MSO’s Education and Community Engagement Programs. This event was the first to sell out, and we now do two of them a year. It has been a great opportunity to play for some new organ enthusiasts, and it also gives me the chance to meet and perform for audience members who attend the symphony but have never gone to an organ event.

What sorts of programs have you done with children?

We have had a number of elementary and middle school classes take a field trip to Overture Hall for me to explain the organ and have them sit down and play the instrument themselves. It is wonderful to see the unique personalities of each student shine through the instrument, with some choosing the loudest sounds on the instrument, and others wanting to play on the softer and more delicate stops.

Prior to the pandemic, I had the students select the different organ sounds for a Bach fugue, and then I performed it using the stops they had selected. The children were excited by both the colors that could be drawn from the organ and the physical aspect of playing this instrument. I was also recently featured in the MSO’s LinkUp Program, which is a music education offering created by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. It was virtual this year, and they showcased the pipe organ in our hall, which I think is a wonderful way to introduce this incredible instrument to our youth.

You are bilingual. Have you been able to utilize that in your work?

It was my Cuban grandfather on my mother’s side that imparted to me the musical gene. He is the reason that I am a musician today, and he also inspired me to arrange works like Malagueña, by the Cuban composer, Ernesto Lecuona. It’s been wonderful to speak Spanish with supporters at receptions, and my Cuban heritage has given me an insight into a different culture. This has allowed me to relate to a wider variety of people, which has been helpful in making friends for our organ program.

Donors generously contributed $30,740.54 to name the Solo division of the Overture Concert Organ in honor of you for your twenty-eighth birthday. That’s quite an honor!

This was a complete surprise to me, and I was shocked in gratitude when they presented me with this honor at a donor event on the day of my birthday. It was done to commemorate my “golden birthday,” which was something that I had never heard of prior to this moment. (Editor’s note: A golden birthday occurs in the year you turn the same age as your birthday—so, turning twenty-eight on October 28, 2019.)

You’ve done some of your own arrangements. (I particularly enjoyed your Clair de Lune.) Do you arrange with the Klais in mind, or were these written prior to Madison?

That particular arrangement was completed prior to my arrival in Madison. I’m grateful to hear that you enjoyed it, because I think some of these reimagined pieces work really well on our Klais. I have, however, recently commissioned an organ and cello sonata from Daniel Ficarri, a classmate from Juilliard, written for our Klais and to be performed with cellist Thomas Mesa in the 2022–2023 season.

Are there any recordings on the horizon?

I will soon be recording my first organ CD as the MSO’s organist and plan on releasing it at my concert in September 2022. I will be performing the works on the CD at the opening of the 2022–2023 season concert and will have a sort of “CD Release” party for the event.

Do you have any special goals or plans for the future?

I think it is imperative that I constantly think of new ways to keep our program fresh and exciting, and presenting a variety of performers and repertoire is fundamental to keeping an audience engaged. It’s a challenge to retain audience members year after year and continue to attract new ones if the program itself doesn’t evolve over time, and so I am always learning new repertoire to perform and thinking of creative ways to program the organ alongside other musicians. It also helps to always have a new joke or two to share with those who attend . . . .

Thank you very much, Greg!

Greg Zelek’s website: gregzelek.com

MSO website: madisonsymphony.org

At the Three Choirs Festival, Hereford Cathedral, England

Lorraine Brugh is currently resident director of Valparaiso University’s Study Centre in Cambridge, England. She is professor of music and the Frederick J. Kruse Organ Fellow at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana.

The Three Choirs Festival celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2015. With a brief hiatus during each world war, this is the longest-running non-competitive classical music festival in the world. The festival is so named for the three cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Worcester, and Hereford. For more information, see Lorraine Brugh’s article on the 2018 festival at Hereford Cathedral in the February issue of The Diapason, pages 20–21. The festival included a recital by Olivier Latry on the cathedral organ.

This interview took place in the Hereford Cathedral gardens after Latry’s early morning practice time. His program for July 31, 2018, included: Prelude and Fugue in E-flat, BWV 552, Johann Sebastian Bach; Choral No. 2 in B Minor, César Franck; Clair de lune, Claude Debussy, transcribed Alexandre Cellier; Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, opus 7, number 3, Marcel Dupré; Postlude pour l’office des Complies, Jehan Alain; Evocation, Thierry Escaich; improvisation on a submitted theme.

Lorraine Brugh: I came in this morning to hear you practice a bit. It sounded wonderful. Is the organ tuned above 440?

Olivier Latry: Yes, a bit. It is always the case in summer when the temperature is high.

I am curious about your recital. Is this the first time you played at the Three Choirs Festival?

No, I was here fifteen years ago for the festival, so this is my second time. I have played recitals on all three of the cathedral organs, but only once before at the festival.

Your program tomorrow includes the Franck Choral in B Minor, a favorite of mine.

Yes, it works very well on this organ.

I’m curious about the Debussy transcription. How did that become an organ piece? It is your transcription?

The piece was originally transcribed for the organ by Alexandre Cellier, a contemporary of Debussy’s. In fact it was normal at that time, when a piece was composed, to make transcriptions of these new works to other instruments. It helped the publisher to sell more copies of the music. Many publishers did that. There are other Debussy pieces that were published that way. Vierne did the same thing with Rachmaninov. With transcriptions we often have to adjust the music. I don’t think it’s a problem to transcribe a transcription, since it was already on the way toward that.

I’d like to hear about Gaston Litaize as a teacher, and the way you have followed him in his footsteps.

Let me say first why I went to Litaize because it is important. I grew up in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the north of France. I began to study the organ in 1974.

The year after, a new organ had just been built for the cathedral there, a very nice instrument by Schwenkedel in the German style. There were a lot of concerts there at that time.

We heard all the great organists. Pierre Cochereau came to play, Philippe Lefebvre, Litaize. Among them it was Litaize who impressed me the most. He had a way of playing the organ that was viril. (He looks up the word in a French dictionary.) In English it is virile, manly. (Latry makes a growl like a lion.)

I was so impressed because the organ sounded like I hadn’t heard it before. We knew that the organ wasn’t the master, he was the master. He played his own music, Franck on this German instrument, the Prelude and Fugue in D Major by Bach, and Clérambault. It was really great. Then I decided I wanted to study with that man at the Academy of Saint-Maur. He was very nervous, much like his playing in fact. Never relaxing, always speaking with a very big voice as well. He was impressive.

For my first lesson at the Academy of Saint-Maur, I was 16 and went on the train with my parents. He was not there that day. He had me play for his assistant. Then the next day he called me and said gruffly, “I heard that you are very good. We will meet next week, and you can play for me.”

So I went there, and he asked me to prepare the first movement of the [Bach] first trio sonata. I said OK, but I thought it wasn’t enough. He didn’t know anything about me so I prepared the whole trio, and then I also played the Bach B-minor Prelude and Fugue.

He first gave me a musicianship test, to see what I could hear, what kinds of chords he played. It wasn’t a problem to do that, it was almost like a game! Then, during the Bach, he made me play an articulation I didn’t like. I didn’t know what to say. I wondered if I should say I don’t like that, or just say yes. I said, “I don’t really like that. Would it be possible to do something else?” He said gruffly, “Ah, very good! Yes, of course, you can do that.” He was so happy because I had my own way.

That was taking a risk.

Of course, especially since it was the first time I played for him. From that day, really, it was very nice, because Litaize could teach his students at different levels. For those who didn’t know anything or have their own musical personality, he would say, “No, do it like this . . . that,” making everything very precise. When someone had enough of their own ideas, then he said they could do it on their own, which was very good. In some ways he taught me many things.

I remember some very nice teaching on the Franck Second Choral. It was just wonderful. The French Classical literature was also very nice. Then we became closer. The second year I went to Paris. I lived with a friend of Litaize who had an organ in his home. Litaize didn’t want to go back home during his two days of teaching in Paris, so he also stayed in that home. He spent all evening speaking about music, listening to music, which for me was very nice. I heard a lot of stories from the 1930s; it was great, great, great. He was also very nice to all of his students. He arranged concerts for his students, and he set up invitations for us to play recitals. The first concert I gave in Holland was because of him. He just gave my name, and that was it. The same thing happened in Germany, and that was very funny.

He said he had accepted an invitation to play in the cathedral in Regensburg, but he didn’t want to go there. He said to me, “Here is my program. You practice my program, and three weeks before the concert I will tell the people that I am ill and I can’t go there. Then I will give your name, and you will play it.”

Can we talk about Notre-Dame? You became one of the titulars early in your life. Can you speak about how the position is for you?

It’s just the center of my life (laughs) although I am not there very often. The three of us titular organists rotate, playing once every three weeks.

I see that you are on to play this weekend.

Yes. We make the schedule at least three or four years in advance; we are currently scheduled until 2022, so we know when we are free. If we need to be away, it is no problem to switch with a colleague.

Notre-Dame is the center of my life for several reasons. First, as you said, I began there early in my life, and it was quite unexpected.

Wasn’t it a competition for that position?

No, there was not a competition for that position. When Cochereau died, Jean-Jacques Grunenwald at St. Sulpice died almost a half year before Cochereau, so that meant that both big instruments had a vacancy for the titular organist at about the same time.

Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, made a rule for hiring the organists for the entire Archdiocese of Paris. We young organists all competed for that, to create a list for the Archdiocese of Paris. This is what the competition was for. I just applied, and was thinking, because I was the second assistant to François-Henri Houbart at La Madeleine, that perhaps there might be another opening there. I played some of the Masses there, and I thought François might move to Notre-Dame. He was one of the best organists in Paris. He first applied and then pulled out. He felt it was better for him to stay at La Madeleine than to be one of four organists at Notre-Dame.

In fact, I didn’t know that, but I suspected that many of the finest organists would apply for Notre-Dame, and that would create vacancies in other parishes. But a few weeks before the competition, I just got a letter saying I was chosen for the competition for Notre-Dame. I was surprised and wondered why. I think it was because I had already been a finalist twice for the Chartres competition, so I was already known by some of the organ world. In addition there was a scandal related to the second competition. In fact I was more known for not winning the prize than had I won the prize. Many people as well as the newspapers were on my side. They all reported that I didn’t win the prize, so everyone was talking about it.

That’s a good way to get famous if it works.

In fact, it was normal, well, not normal, but at least it happened many times in those years that competitions were contested. The Rostropovich competition, the Besançon conductors’ competition, which happened at exactly the same time, also the Chopin Competition, where Martha Argerich left the jury, because Ivo Pogorelich was kicked out.

Was it politics?

We never know. I was also known by the clergy because I was teaching at the Catholic Institute of Paris, so that’s probably why I went on the list for Notre-Dame.

I was so sure that I would not be chosen that I was totally relaxed. I just played. I almost never improvised at that time. The first time I improvised three hours in a row in my life was at Notre-Dame for the rehearsal for the competition. It was very funny. And it worked!

Evidently! That’s a good way to enter something, though, when you don’t think you have a chance.

It was not difficult afterwards, because I was ready technically, but I was only twenty-three. I had a lot of repertoire, but I wasn’t fully mature. With Litaize I played at least thirty to forty minutes of new music every week. I just wanted to spend my time learning repertoire.

Did he require that?

No, I just wanted to spend my time learning repertoire. I could learn pretty fast. It is how I was trained. If you are trained to learn fast, you can learn even faster. I remember, once on a Monday I started the Diptyque by Messiaen, and I spent nine hours that day, and I played it the next day for a lesson. I couldn’t do that now.

Do you think you have some unusual kind of memory or is that just how you were trained?

It is my training. I don’t have a photographic memory; that is actually my weakest kind of memory. Even so, visual memory would be the last kind I would use. When I see someone just use their visual memory it makes me nervous. I would use more tactile memory.

We call that muscle memory.

The best is always intellectual memory. I’ll come back to that.

When I began at Notre-Dame it was difficult because I was not ready for that kind of exposure to the public. When I played a concert before, perhaps forty a year or so, I had between eighty and two hundred people at a concert. Then, from one day to the next, it was never less than two hundred, and usually more. And why? I don’t play better or worse than yesterday, so why is it like this now? That is the first point.

The second point is that I discovered that people can be very tough. Many critics I had for a recording I made early attacked me for no reason. Just because I was there at Notre-Dame, I was the target. That was really difficult for the first two years, and then afterwards I was OK, I just said, ‘let’s go.’ Before that I was on my way to resigning. Some friends had said to me if I didn’t feel comfortable there, if I needed to protect myself more, perhaps I shouldn’t stay there. These were not organists who wanted to be there, they were just friends. Then I realized that I am an organist at Notre-Dame. I can’t leave it now. So I just changed my mind, and that was that. It was very hard.

Can we talk about your teaching and how much you do at the Conservatoire?

In fact, I started at Rheims, and then Saint Maur where I succeeded Litaize, and remained there for five years. Then I was approached by the Conservatoire in 1995. It was very funny because before that, I was assistant to Michel Chapuis. When he was retiring, the director of the Conservatoire asked if I would like to be one of the teachers. He wanted to divide the organ class in three different ways. One teacher would teach ancient music, i.e., the music up to Bach; another would teach Bach and after, including contemporary music; the third position would be for improvisation. He wanted me to be the teacher for Bach and contemporary music.

I said I wasn’t sure I wanted something like this because I like to teach every style of music. I don’t think it’s good to have some sort of specialization like that. One really needs to have a general approach to literature. He said that it was my choice, but think about it, and that if I didn’t want to do that, it was my decision. I was quite depressed about this and called my good friend Michel Bouvard. I said I had to tell him something, I was just asked to teach at the Conservatoire de Paris, and he let me speak.

Bouvard told me that he agreed with my approach not to specialize, and he said what he liked in music is what is common in all music. He let me speak for ten minutes, and then he said that the director had called him also. I didn’t know that! He wanted him to teach the early music part, and he would refuse because he didn’t want to do that. So we both refused. Then, finally, we decided to have an organ class with two teachers teaching all the literature.

The students can go to either teacher. It’s very nice, because it’s a different approach for the students. It is sometimes difficult for them, because Bouvard and I are never in agreement about interpretation. Often we have a student for one year, and then we switch, but it can be less, sometimes months or even one lesson. In fact, when they have the same piece with both teachers it is very funny because I might say, “Why do you do it like this?” and “It’s not right, you should do it like this.” And the same goes for Bouvard. The student wonders what they should do. It can be disturbing for the student in the beginning because they have to find their way, their own way. The only time we ask them to do something really as we want is when we both agree. Then they better do that.

It is very effective because we are friends, and don’t always agree, but we never fight, even over these twenty-three years. It is also a good thing for the students to see that we can disagree about some things. It is also good for the general idea of the organ world. It is not that we are only critical of one another. In fact since we have made these changes at the Conservatoire, other areas, the oboes, for example, have started sharing students. The best would be when the pianists will share students, but, for that, we will probably have to wait another hundred years.

It is nice because Bouvard and I have the same goal with the music but we always take it in different ways. We have a lot of discussion; we write and call each other five or six times a week and discuss and argue about musical points. We have long discussions.

That’s nice for the students, too, that they can see you dealing with each other in mutual respect.

Yes, I agree. Especially in Paris, where there are so many instruments and that long tradition of fine organists, it is important for the students to see and hear as many of the Parisian organists as possible, to meet them, hear their improvisations, like Thierry Escaich, as I did when I was a student. I went to Notre-Dame, to Madeleine, to Trinité. We encourage them to do that, too. Beyond that, though, we set up some exchange for the students to perform concerts, or to be an organist-in-residence. We have an exchange at the castle in Versailles. Not bad, eh?

Not bad at all!

Each student will play once on their weekly concert there in the French Classic tradition. For that they have five hours of rehearsal on the castle organ. The castle is closed, and they have the keys to the castle in their pocket. Can you imagine having that as a student?

It’s like heaven!

Yes, I think that too. This is one of the things that we do. We also have an exchange with the concert hall in Sapporo, Japan. We send a student there every year. They do teaching, playing concerts in the concert hall.

We have an exchange with the Catholic Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana. We send a student there the first Sunday in Advent, and they are in residence until the Sunday after Easter. They are playing for the choir there, also for Masses.

So they’re there for Mardi Gras. That’s rather dangerous.

(Laughter)

The Conservatoire makes the arrangements for this, but it is our decision to have this kind of exchange. We could just give our lessons, and that would be it. That is all that is required. We feel that it is so important for the students that we want them to have these experiences.

We also have now at Versailles a student in residence for a year there, and also at Notre-Dame. They play for the choir and other things. It would be like an organ scholar in the UK. They might accompany the choir, work with singers, do improvisations in the Mass, maybe play for Mass on the choir organ, anything that the professional organist would do.

At the Conservatoire we are trying to expand the students’ repertoire for the master’s students. They have to play fifty minutes of ‘virtuoso’ music the first year. This is music of their choice and proof that they can handle that. Then they play twenty minutes of music on the German Baroque organ, twenty minutes on the historical Italian organ from 1702 at the Conservatoire, then twenty minutes of French Classic music on the Versailles organ, to see how they react to different repertoire. Then for the master’s degree program they can choose the organ they want to play in Paris. They could say they’d like to play Vierne, Alain, or Florentz at Notre-Dame, or Messiaen at La Trinité, or Franck Three Chorals at St. Clothilde, or a Mass by Couperin at St. Gervais, and we arrange that.

I studied a few lessons with Chapuis one summer in Paris.

One really needs the instruments to do that.

And the teacher. He was wonderful.

Yes, he was. I also had lessons with him, together with the musicologist, Jean Saint-Arroman. Jean is still alive, in his eighties. He wrote a dictionary for French Classical music from 1651 to 1789. It is really incredible because so much information is there. Each time we have a question we just call him. Even when I would have a fight with Mr. Bouvard, we could call him up, and he would settle it! We will have a great project on the music by Raison next term at the Conservatoire, with all the approaches (old fingerings, story, religious and political context, figured bass, etc.) ending with two concerts.

I know one of the things you are interested in is new music.

Well, yes and no. What I love is music that is expressive, that brings something in an emotional way. So it could be something different for each piece of music. For instance, music can be angry. I don’t play music for that only. (laughs) I think sharing those emotions is important. It is also sharing in a spiritual way. Being an artist and an organist, I think we have that privilege to connect the emotional and the spiritual more than other instruments, even more than a pianist.

I like contemporary music that touches me. I play a lot of this music. Sometimes I just play it once, some I hope to play many times. The French composers like Thierry Escaich and Jean-Louis Florentz are so emotional. I also play a lot of music for organ and orchestra. It is a way to connect the organ to the real world of music. Otherwise the organ is always a satellite, only found in a church.

Those concerti help more people to be connected to the organ. I played a new piece by Michael Gandolfi for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I performed a piece by Gerald Levinson at the 2006 dedication of a new organ in Philadelphia.

In Montreal, we first premiered a piece by Kaija Saariaho, a Finnish composer. This piece was also performed in London and in Los Angeles under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen. It is important to me to have that kind of relation with orchestras and other musicians. I will play the Third Concerto by Thierry Escaich in Dresden, and then in 2020, I will play the Pascal Dusapin Concerto.

What is your relationship to the Dresden Philharmonie?

I have a position in residence there for two years, ending in June 2019. This allows us to do things we would never do otherwise. We will play a concert with the brass ensemble, Phil Blech of the Vienna Philharmonic, and they play wonderfully. We will also perform the same concert at the Musikverein in Vienna. Concert halls are important because some people don’t want to go into a church. Hearing an organ concert in a concert hall shouldn’t be a problem. In Paris we fight a lot to have organs in the concert halls. I just did a recording of transcriptions on the new organ at the Paris Philharmonie. It is an incredible organ. The CD Voyages is now available.

What would you like to say to American organists? Most of the readers are practicing organists or organ enthusiasts.

It is difficult to know, but what I would say is just hope and try to do our best. We need to convince people that the organ can really add to our life in many ways. I don’t know how it is in the United States with the relation to the clergy, but it can be complicated. I would say, at Notre-Dame, I only play the organ. I don’t have anything to do with the administration, with anything about running the cathedral. The organ is high, far away from everything. We are there, and if we don’t want to see the clergy, we can do that. It is better, though, to have a closer relationship.

The musicians go for an aperitif with the clergy after the Sunday Masses and we are all together. It is rather funny, because we talk about little details, and we can banter back and forth. We have mutual respect for each other, which allows us an easy rapport. It is a sort of communion between the priest, the choir, and the musicians. We rarely play written literature during the ritual action in the service. We cannot make the priest wait for two minutes because our chorale isn’t finished.

You time the organ music to the liturgical action?

Yes, so, for that, we usually improvise, and it is much better. We can improvise in the style of what we heard, in imitation of a motet by the choir, or the sermon. Sometimes the clergy react to what we do. After a prelude or a sermon, the priest might say he heard something from the organ and responds in the moment.

So the priests assume there is a dialogue going on with the music?

Yes, of course. It works both ways. It is not possible to do something against one another. We can do everything. The music isn’t something to just make people quiet; it can make them cry or be angry. Usually after the sermon we do something soft, on the Voix céleste or something similar. However it is not a problem to improvise for two minutes on the full organ, even clusters, if it is a response to what the priest said. We have never heard a priest comment that it is too loud. This can only happen with a kind of relationship that allows everything to be open for discussion.

We have an organ that has a lot of possibilities. We have to exploit all those possibilities rather than follow a prescribed response just because it’s the middle of the Mass. The context is not always the same. It is our job to create the atmosphere for the service.

One of my favorite times is the introit for the 10 a.m. Gregorian Mass. 11:30 is the polyphonic Mass, which is especially for tourists, and the evening Mass is the cardinal Mass, most like a parish Mass. Notre Dame is not a parish, but that is when the local people come. From the introit of the first Mass we have Gregorian texts and their interpretations. I read the texts before the improvisation. The texts will be the source for a ten-minute improvisation. It is like a symphonic poem. We can bring people to the subject of the day.

Let’s talk about memorization, because it is so important how to learn to learn. We try to do this with memorization, especially at the Conservatoire, because people are scared. We say that a memory slip is like playing a wrong note. Don’t be scared if you get lost. If you know how to come back to the music and learn the technique to do so, you won’t have a problem. It is also a question of confidence. If you are confident, there is no problem.

It is like riding a bike. One must know first how to memorize the technical way. For me the best way to memorize is to have all the connections together. Memorization is like a wall. When you see a wall, one sees that the stones are never the same size. In fact, the actual musical notes are one level of the stones. Another level is the harmony, another is the fingerings, and then the movements, the music. All combined makes the big wall. Then, if there is one step missing you are still OK. If you have too many holes, then the wall falls down. So it is important to be sure that everything is in place.

One must know what is the fingering there, without moving the fingers. Be able to copy the music down like it is in the score, to make sure it is the same as the score. What I do for the students, because they are so scared, is I say “stop” while they are playing. I ask if they know where they are, and ask them to pick up the music two bars later.

Then, finally I’d like to finish by talking about memorization with Litaize. We attended each other’s lessons with him because we were all friends. He didn’t require it but we wanted to. We were there at the same time. I listened to the lessons, and it was very nice. When he wanted to make an example to people, he could play, at the right tempo, the place in the music he wanted to demonstrate. It was like he had a film of the music going on in his mind, and he could play anywhere he wished. I do that with the students, and it is so effective. It is even better with a trio sonata. I ask the student to play, and then I turn one manual off and have them continue. This teaches them that they can go anywhere.

They have learned the music deeply.

Yes. Once you have the music in your head, then it is easy to practice all the time. You don’t need an organ to practice. Of course, you have to learn the notes on a piano or organ. Once it’s in your head you can practice while you’re walking, in the shower, sleeping. One can practice twenty-four hours a day.

It’s time we bring this to a close, and I think our readers will be interested in hearing what you have said today. I appreciate the time you have taken today to meet me the day before your recital. I look forward to hearing your recital tomorrow. Best wishes.

Thank you very much.

Editor’s note: On Monday, April 15, the world watched as Notre-Dame Cathedral of Paris suffered a catastrophic fire that has damaged much of the historic building. Some of the edifice and its pipe organs have survived in a state that continues to be assessed for eventual restoration.

Mr. Latry recorded a compact disc on the cathedral organ in January, the last CD recorded before the fire. Released by La Dolce Vita, Bach to the Future features the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. For information, readers may visit: www.ladolcevita.com. The disc is also available from www.amazon.com, and other resources.

Various news media sources of the world have reported that numerous donations have been made already to rebuild the cathedral. However, Mr. Latry has pointed out that a very different and very real problem exists as the 67 employees of the cathedral are now without an income. Those who wish to make a contribution to the rebuilding of the cathedral and to assist those who work at the cathedral may visit: https://www.notredamedeparis.fr/participate-in-the-reconstruction-of-th…

Photo caption: Olivier Latry and Lorraine Brugh (photo credit: Gary Brugh)