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Stephen Tharp Recital

The Opus 327 foundation of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Evanston, Illinois, presents Stephen Tharp playing Petr Eben’s Faust with readings selected by the composer on March 9 at 7:30 p.m. on the church’s 1922 Skinner pipe organ, Opus 327. For information: www.stlukesevanston.org.

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Ernest M. Skinner Sesquicentennial Conference, April 24-25, 2016, Evanston, Illinois

Stephen Schnurr
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In January 2015, The Diapason partnered with the Chicago and Fox Valley chapters of the American Guild of Organists and the Chicago-Midwest Chapter of the Organ Historical Society in presenting a Midwinter Pipe Organ Conclave, a two-day event of recitals, lectures, and workshops in La Grange, Illinois. In 2016, our team, now joined by the North Shore AGO chapter and the Music Institute of Chicago, will celebrate the sesquicentennial of the birth of one of America’s best-known organ builders, Ernest M. Skinner (1866–1960). Our conference will take place April 24–25 in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb immediately north of the city of Chicago. Subscribers of The Diapason are invited to join us; those traveling from a distance will find Evanston has easy access to both of Chicago’s airports (O’Hare and Midway) as well as the many interstate highways that lead to our metropolitan area. There are several hotels a short distance from downtown Evanston.

The conference opens Sunday evening, April 24, with a concert by Chicago’s premiere professional chamber choir, Bella Voce, in historic St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. The choir’s program, “Faire Is the Heaven,” will feature Anglican masterpieces for choir and organ by William Harris, William Walton, H. Balfour Gardiner, and Herbert Howells. The award-winning group, founded in 1982 as His Majestie’s Clerkes, has recordings available on the Centaur, Harmonia Mundi, Narada, and Cedille labels. Andrew Lewis is artistic director of Bella Voce, as well as choirmaster for St. Luke’s Church.

The gothic architecture of St. Luke’s Church is one of the ecclesiastical jewels of the Chicago region. Designed by John Sutcliffe, construction for the building began in 1906, and the nave was finished some eight years later. In 1922, the Skinner Organ Company installed its Opus 327, a large four-manual organ. In the 1990s, the organ was restored by the A. Thompson-Allen Company of New Haven, Connecticut. The organ will be featured during the Bella Voce concert.

Monday morning, April 25, opens with a lecture by Stephen Schnurr at First Congregational Church. Editor-at-large for The Diapason and director of music for St. Paul Catholic Church of Valparaiso, Indiana, Schnurr will discuss the work of Ernest Skinner in Chicago.

Later that morning, Andrew Schaeffer will present a recital in the sanctuary of First Congregational Church. The building, finished in 1927 to the designs Tallmadge & Watson, one of Chicago’s premier firms of that era for Protestant churches, is distinctive for its American Colonial style. Schaeffer will play Skinner Organ Company Opus 616, a three-manual, 32-rank organ. A Chicago native and one of The Diapason’s “20 under 30” Class of 2015, Schaeffer is working on a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance at the University of Oklahoma.

After a catered luncheon, we will then hear a lecture by Joyce Robinson, editorial director and publisher of The Diapason. Robinson’s lecture will focus on the presence of Ernest M. Skinner in The Diapason, including his many letters and articles.

This will be followed by an organ crawl and open console, where registrants will be able to experience first-hand the work of Skinner within a walking distance of First Congregational Church. A short distance across Raymond Park is the Music Institute of Chicago, built as First Church of Christ, Scientist. Designed by Chicago’s Solon Spencer Beman, the neo-Classical building is home to the 550-seat Nichols Concert Hall. There we will visit the oldest playable Skinner organ in Illinois, Ernest M. Skinner Company Opus 208, a three-manual organ. A little further distant, Opus 327 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church will also be available for a visit.

We will all gather once more in the nave of the First Congregational Church for our final event, a recital by David Jonies. Jonies is associate director of music for the Cathedral of the Holy Name in downtown Chicago.

Registration for the entire conference, including Monday’s luncheon, is only $70. We are sure you will want to join us for this springtime event of music and learning! To register, visit www.skinner2016.org.

Catching up with Stephen Tharp

Reflections ten years later

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is editorial director of The Diapason. 

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An interview with Stephen Tharp appeared a decade ago in The Diapason (“A conversation with Stephen Tharp: Catching up with a well-traveled recitalist,” January 2004). At that time, Tharp’s discography included six recordings, and he had made over twenty intercontinental tours. Among the topics discussed were Tharp’s many concert tours, his advocacy of new music, and interest in transcriptions. In the decade since, Tharp has continued his travels and performances, and received many accolades. He presently resides in New York City, where he serves as associate director of music at the Church of Our Saviour. Stephen Tharp will be the featured performer at the closing recital of 2014’s American Guild of Organists national convention in Boston.
 
 
Joyce Robinson: Our previous interview’s title called you a “well-traveled recitalist,” and that seems truer than ever today. Tell us about your concert tours (and how you keep track of all those recitals!).
 
My grandfather, who was director of personnel management at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Chicago for some 40-plus years, and also a lecturer at both Northwestern University and University of Chicago post-World War II, was a real business model for me. He was the ultimate paper hoarder, keeping track of all of his correspondence, lectures, and so forth, throughout his life. For better or worse, he taught me to keep a paper record of everything I’d accomplished. 
 
Of course, I let go of a great deal with time, but, as far as concert programs go, I have saved one copy of everything I have ever played. Consequently, after 1,400 concerts, I am glad I can look back, trace them, and keep track—like keeping a diary. My 1300th solo recital was at St. Laurenskerk in Rotterdam, on their very large Marcussen organ, in November 2008. A few days later, in St. Martin, Dudelange, Luxembourg, was the concert that coincided with my Jeanne Demessieux Complete Organ Works CD set (Aeolus Recordings) “release party,” where the recording was officially made available to the public for the first time. It remains my largest recording project to date, which I will discuss more a little later. The recording led directly to a series of three concerts in October 2010 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, wherein I played the complete organ works of Demessieux.
 
On July 30, 2013, I performed my 1400th solo concert, for the organ festival in La Verna, Tuscany (some of which is up on YouTube). This is the place, on top of a mountain and a 90-minute drive from Florence, where Francis of Assisi spent his later years on land that was bequeathed to him. It is a picturesque spot surrounded by forests untouched for some 900 years; in the center is a basilica where there is a regular summer festival of organ concerts catering to an immense tourist crowd that packs the house for recitals starting at 9 p.m. (when the temperature cools down enough for a full church to be tolerable). A small group of friends and colleagues celebrated afterwards with a private meal that included regional wines.
 
What is awesome for the organ in central European culture is that festivals like this, well attended, grow on trees. In Germany alone, you could hit a series every weekend for two years without repeating yourself—funding in place, quite often new organs, and audiences that support its continuation. There seems something about Old World culture that’s founded in the deepest roots, centuries of traditions under them, that maintains a thriving life no matter what the come-and-go cultural shifts of any given generation—a kind of condensed richness around which you can build an entire life. 
 
As for my own tours, 1,400 concerts means too many to name. Standouts include the Gewandhaus, Leipzig; the Igreja de Lapa in Porto, Portugal; Victoria Hall, Geneva; the Frauenkirche, Dresden (which was only recently reconstructed); the inaugural organ week of the new Seifert organ at the Cathedral in Speyer, Germany, with its 14-second acoustic—a whole new character for Alain’s Trois Danses; Ben van Oosten’s glorious festival in The Hague; twice at the Berlin Cathedral, with another concert set for summer 2015; Cologne Cathedral (with its 5,000 regular concertgoers during the summer Orgelfeierstunden, encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs if necessary and seat themselves in the aisles, which they do, going wild over a program of Guillou, Alain, Dupré, and Litaize); the summer festival at St. Bavo, Haarlem (there are no words for the experience of playing this organ); playing the de Grigny Messe on the Dom Bedos at Ste. Croix in Bordeaux, and so on. In addition to that, my one and only action-packed trip without jetlag adjustment, over six days, for concerts in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Riga. Twice to Hong Kong, twice to Korea, twice to Australia. Every memorable moment outside the box would take a book. But connect all the dots over time and it’s the richest and most diverse menu of experiences I could ever have imagined. And as an American, it is seeing the forest from outside the trees, in spades, and that has determined a great deal for me.
 
 
You’ve also been busy with recordings. Would you summarize these, and tell us about your experiences making them? 
 
This is a discussion of but a few of my projects. Ultimately, audio and video recordings are one’s most powerful tools. How one can spread the word on Facebook, iTunes, or YouTube puts global exposure at your fingertips, which is wonderful. Listening as a child to LPs of many organs, I often fantasized about getting to these instruments one day, either to perform on them or record them myself. One of my greatest battery chargers, the kind that continues to inspire in the long term, has been recording a number of these landmark instruments, both for JAV Recordings and the Aeolus label in Germany. 
 
The first opportunity like this was St. Sulpice, Paris, where I recorded in October 2001, a somewhat nervous traveler given the horrific events of September 11 the month before—and amplified by a flight over to Paris on a plane that was mostly empty. In 2005 I was back in St. Sulpice for two more projects. A large choir, comprising several groups, was assembled to record the Widor Mass, op. 36, for choir and two organs (main and choir organ), which was never before recorded in St. Sulpice. With Daniel Roth at the grand orgue, Mark Dwyer and I played musical benches with the orgue de choeur in the front of the church. In the two days that followed that project, I had the great pleasure of recording Dupré’s Le Chemin de la Croix there. Dupré recorded this years before in St. Sulpice on LP, which went out of print. So, my recording is the only one available of this entire work on the organ most associated with the composer.
 
In the summer/early fall of 2008 I made two more recordings for JAV within a month of each other, which were released at different times. One is my organ adaptation of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations on Paul Fritts’s stunning magnum opus instrument at St. Joseph’s Cathedral, Columbus, Ohio, and the other a mixed repertoire recording on the Christian Müller organ of St. Bavo, Haarlem, the Netherlands. My first experience with this famous organ was as a student when, at age 20, I spent three weeks at the Haarlem International Organ Academy as the result of a generous scholarship from Illinois College. That experience was life-changing in that it turned my thinking upside down and, consequently, permanently re-directed the way I would conceive performance as it is informed by music history and aesthetics, standards that remain in place to this day. I can’t fully express how thankful I am that this was an experience I had at a young age, when these influences had the chance to be the most powerful.
 
On this side of the pond is the first commercial recording of the Casavant organ Opus 3837 at the Brick Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. This instrument, a cooperative design between director of music Keith Tóth and Jean-Louis Coignet, is a masterpiece. A synthesis between the French symphonic and American orchestral, the organ covers music from Jongen to Tournemire to Hakim to Guilmant, in a warm acoustic environment. There is also my Organ Classics from Saint Patrick Cathedral in New York City—all somewhat lighter fare, some organ solo, some organ plus trumpet, aside from a few heftier pieces by Cook, Vierne, and Widor. It was a great pleasure to have been able to make these two recordings.
 
All of my commercial CD releases from St. Sulpice thus far are on JAV, and all engineered by the outstanding Christoph Frommen, who also owns the Aeolus label in Germany. It was with Frommen, and for Aeolus, that I embarked upon my biggest recording project to date: The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux. I had played much of her music starting as early as my college years, but to document all of her organ solo works on recording was an exciting and challenging prospect. Too many stereotypes were also floating around about this music: that it was a language worth little more than an extension of Dupré’s harmonic idiom, more cerebral than communicative, and not worth the effort. I sought to prove this very wrong. 
 
At the time of the recording, several pieces remained unpublished, and so Chris Frommen and I sought copies of these in manuscript form from Pierre Labric, one of Demessieux’s more famous students, who generously shared the scores with us for this project. These are, specifically, Nativité, Andante, and the Répons (the one for Easter being the only score from the set previously published), now printed by Delatour in France. 
 
We needed an electric-action organ for certain pieces, most importantly the treacherous Six Études, so some of the recording was done on the Stahlhuth/Jann instrument at the Church of St. Martin, Dudelange, Luxembourg, an organ of great color and strength. For the remainder of the release, we chose the great Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. Ouen, Rouen, France, an instrument closely associated with Demessieux’s life. This is such a splendid oeuvre that was too long overlooked. If you don’t know the music, investigate it.
It is with Aeolus that I will release my next recording, the Symphonies 5 and 6 of Louis Vierne. Symphonies 1–4 are now available with Daniel Roth, and my release will complete the set, hopefully later this year. All were recorded again at St. Sulpice.
 
One additional recording must be mentioned, as it appears as a single track on iTunes and is not part of any CD. In September 2010, as a part of one of Michael Barone’s Pipedreams Live! concerts, I played the world premiere of a work I’d commissioned for the occasion from George Baker, Variations on ‘Rouen.’ It is also composed in memory of Jehan Alain, and so there are harmonic and motivic nods in that direction, very much on purpose. That first performance was played at the Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas; my recording of the piece, made as well at St. Sulpice, is what is available on iTunes. There is also a YouTube concert video of my live performance of it at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica in Missouri from the summer of 2013.
 
 
You are also a composer and arranger, creating both transcriptions and original compositions. Are any of these published? Do you have any plans for future works?
 
I have only one published organ work, my Easter Fanfares, composed in 2006 as the result of a commission from Cologne Cathedral in Germany. Two new high-pressure en chamade Tuba ranks had been added to the instrument at the west end of the cathedral, which they wanted to play for the first time at Easter in 2006. My work was composed to be the postlude for that occasion. It is structured, at surface level, like an improvised sortie with the architecture of a written composition, with all melodic and motivic material throughout derived from only two sources: Ite Missa est, Alleluia, the dismissal at the conclusion of the Mass, and the Easter sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes. The piece is dedicated to the Cologne Cathedral organist Winfried Bönig, and is published in a collection of organ music specifically written for the Cologne Cathedral organ called Cologne Fanfares. It is published by Butz Musikverlag of Bonn. There is a JAV YouTube video of me playing the work at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, made a few years ago. 
My only other fairly recent solo organ work was occasion-specific, my Disney’s Trumpets, written for the organ at the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, where I premiered it in concert in March 2011. It is a short, agitato fanfare designed to highlight the various powerful reed stops of this particular instrument, heard both separately by division and, at times, altogether. I kept the unique visual design of the façade in mind. In musical terms, this is reflected in short riffs, which appear rapidly, flinging gestures into many directions at will. And as with the organ’s façade, which appears random to the eye amidst an underlying cohesive structure, so is true in this work, where an overall architecture gives proportion to what seems irregular. As an added layer of tongue-and-cheek, I used as the model for the riffs a motive from a song by David Bowie, of all things. (I don’t remember the name anymore.) I have only played Disney’s Trumpets that one time.
 
I also have an ongoing list of organ transcriptions, which I’m getting to little by little. Those are premiered here and there from time to time; Chopin, Dukas, Stravinsky, Bartók, Mussorgsky, Liszt. I have also toured quite a bit with David Briggs’s colorful transcription of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé and two rather demanding organ adaptations by a gifted Italian colleague, Eugenio Fagiani, namely J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Ravel’s La Valse.
 
 
You have received several awards in recent years. Tell us about those.
 
There are two particular awards about which I feel especially honored. One is the 2011 International Performer of the Year award from the New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists, the only award of its kind specifically for organists from any professional music guild in the United States. It is a recognition of long-standing accomplishment whose list of recipients is truly global, and I tie with Dame Gillian Weir for the youngest in the award’s history (received, respectively, at the same age in our early 40s). The other is the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Germany’s highest critic’s award for recordings, which I received for The Complete Organ Works of Jeanne Demessieux release on Aeolus. Imagine some 140 judges looking at an assortment of releases and ripping apart everything from sound quality to performance to graphic design to music notes scholarship. This is the prize. The recipients are chosen under great scrutiny, more so than voted for (and there is a big difference). It is, for me subjectively, the ultimate compliment. Other recipients at that time include the Philadelphia Orchestra, Marc-André Hamelin, and Cecilia Bartoli.
 
 
Beyond your solo career, you have also worked as a church musician. Are you presently doing so?
 
In September 2013 I was offered the position of associate director of music and organist at the Church of Our Saviour (Roman Catholic) in Manhattan by the newly appointed music director and organist, Paul Murray, a long-time friend and colleague in the city with whom I have collaborated on many previous occasions. Ironically, it was in this very church that my wife Lena and I had our son Adrian (born January 5, 2013) baptized. This music program embodies high standards of choral singing—we have an all-professional choir—use of chant, a rich palette of choral and organ repertoire, and no-nonsense liturgical organ improvisation, something I was not doing in New York City since my days at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The mission statement of the church has been beautifully summarized by Mr. Murray as follows:

 
In the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, it was made clear that the Church’s musical heritage, namely chant and polyphony, was to be preserved. At the Church of Our Saviour in New York City, it is my goal to build a liturgical music program that is in concurrence with the admonition of the Second Vatican Council, by developing a professional music program offering music of the highest caliber to the Greater Glory of God.
 
Paul and I have a great rapport as professional colleagues, devoid of the drama that all too often accompanies working relationships. In this regard, I’ve struck gold. The church is also very supportive of my travels. Everything about this position is a match, the kind one hopes to find but rarely does. It is a special centering for me that provides a constant in my artistic life as other things continue in different directions.
 
I must also make mention of post-Easter April 2008, when I was asked to be the official organist for the New York City visit of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. I was contacted by the current director of music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Jennifer Pascual, who was in charge of music for all events for the Pope’s visit. The organist at the cathedral had been taken ill, and I was asked to cover all televised events from St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Yorkville (in Manhattan), St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and, yes, Yankee Stadium, which took place outdoors. I was struck primarily with how this church leader in his 80s, not some young pop star, captivated these massive gatherings with an energy that was palpable. Music for each of the three occasions was different, involving soloists, choirs, and instrumental ensembles, rehearsals for all of which occurred in under two weeks. It was quite moving to be in the center of the energy that radiated from these huge events. And my days at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the mid-1990s had prepared me for live television, which is always exhilarating.
 
 
What are your thoughts about the future? 
 
Becoming the father of a little boy who is now 1-1/2 years old has become the ultimate filter. My shifts in priorities have been herculean, in a way that a parent understands. I am very sensitive to the passage of time one doesn’t see again, so there is this intolerance for the irrelevant, the counter-productive and the trivial.
 
The most important thing for me to remember is why I have always done what I do, as that unshakably justifies how I must continue. It is critical for me to remember that I was never media-constructed at a young age. In fact, that approach in this country during my 20s, under management, completely failed. I have, however, taken decades to build where I am, and am one who is given the respect on a global platform that I probably sought above all else. It’s an Old School approach to achievement—and it stems from the kind of teaching I had—the kind that leaves you a library of references, not just a membership, and that you don’t accomplish overnight. It must be earned.
 
This all underscores one aspect of my musical life that has become even more pronounced. I consider myself a very serious artist, not an entertainer, one who believes that an audience knows the difference between putting before them a substantial product and just celebrity. If what you speak reaches people profoundly, they remember not only you as the vehicle but the statement, the music itself, and musical memories that matter. You see, this is what will actually save our instrument. Popularity alone is not enough. Actually moving an audience is vital, as this instigates a curiosity for more, which has direct impact on literacy, not merely fascination. It is not possible to produce book after book without addressing the literacy of your readers and then claim you have “saved the book.” There is a big difference between selling an audience tickets and keeping them there. That said, every teacher has to make decisions: one cannot build rockets by continuing to play with blocks. And if nobody curates the collection, what will all of the newly schooled have to hear beyond Concerts 101? 
 
It is no great secret that I have a mostly European career. My own passion for the lineage of such long-rooted, historically aware and layered culture seems to be a marriage with the demand for it from the large (and multi-aged) audiences that continue to want programs of real meat and substance. I feel that I am most inspired engaging an environment wherein, no matter what other globalization invades, the baby isn’t simply discarded with the bathwater. This will continue as my direction for the future, regardless of what else happens. It’s taken me years to evolve to this point, but this article documents part of the journey.
 
 

Stephen Tharp's Discography

 
Naxos Recordings 8.553583
 
Ethereal Recordings 108
 
Ethereal Recordings 104
 
Capstone Records 8679
 
Ethereal Recordings 123
 
 
JAV Recordings 130
 
JAV Recordings 138
 
JAV Recordings 161
 
JAV Recordings 160
 
JAV Recordings 162
 
Aeolus Recordings 10561
 
JAV Recordings 178
 
JAV Recordings 172
 
JAV Recordings 185
 
JAV Recordings 5163
 
 
Christopher Berry (cond.); Stephen Tharp (org.); the Seminary Choir of the Pontifical North American College, Vatican City State
Duruflé Messe “cum Jubilo”; sung chants; organ improvisations
JAV Recordings 181
 
Christopher Hyde (cond.); Camille Haedt-Goussu (cond.); Daniel Roth (Grand Orgue); Stephen Tharp (Orgue du Choeur); Mark Dwyer (Orgue du Choeur); Choeur Darius Milhaud; Ensemble Dodecamen
Widor Mass, Op. 36 plus motets; choir/organ works by Bellenot and Lefébure-Wély; organ improvisations by Daniel Roth
Recorded at St. Sulpice, Paris, France
JAV Recordings 158
 
Richard Proulx (cond.); Stephen Tharp (org.); The Cathedral Singers
Recorded at St. Luke’s Church, Evanston, Illinois
GIA Publications, Chicago
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-926
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.); Edmund Connoly (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-954
 
Maxine Thévenot (cond. and org.); Stephen Tharp (org.); Edmund Connoly (org.) 
The Choirs of the Cathedral of St. John, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Raven OAR-955

 

55th University of Michigan Organ Conference

October 4–6, 2015

Marcia Van Oyen earned master’s and DMA degrees at the University of Michigan, studying organ with Robert Glasgow. She is currently minister of music, worship, and fine arts at First United Methodist Church in Plymouth, Michigan.

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The 55th annual University of Michigan Organ Conference, with the theme “Organ Music of Central Europe,” took place October 4–6, 2015. Following Michele Johns’ retirement celebration in 2014, and the Marilyn Mason fête the year before, this conference was a quieter affair, attracting mostly local Michigan alumni and current students. 

 

Renovation and expansion of the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance

Beautiful autumn weather on Monday permitted lunch outdoors, on the terrace of the new William K. and Delores S. Brehm Pavilion, part of a $29.5 million renovation and expansion of the Earl V. Moore Building, designed by Eero Saarinen and originally opened in 1964. Lack of funding when the structure was built led to compromises, and Saarinen’s original vision was not fully realized. The building was never able to accommodate the school’s full spectrum of music courses or faculty. Some of the building’s limitations were addressed in 1985 with the addition of the Margaret Dow Towsley Center, which added the McIntosh Theatre and Blanche Anderson Moore Organ Hall. 

The new Brehm Pavilion includes a rehearsal hall for large ensembles, a music technology center, a state-of-the-art lecture hall, percussion practice rooms, and new classrooms. Substantial renovations resulted in additional practice rooms, a public commons, acoustical, aesthetic, and functional improvements to existing rehearsal, performance and studio spaces, and faculty offices. 

 Sunday conference events

Sunday afternoon at Hill Auditorium, Douglas Reed played a superb concert, “A Tribute to William Albright and William Bolcom.” It was an ambitious program, to be sure, and not for the faint of heart performer, but Reed was more than up to the challenge. He began with two works of Albright’s “public” music, Carillon-Bombarde and Hymn, both published works, then provided a contrast with what Albright considered his “private” music—“Whistler (1834–1903): Three Nocturnes,” which remains in manuscript form. The nocturnes need the reference of Whistler’s three paintings in order to be appreciated, and Reed provided these, in color, in the program. Each painting portrays a scene at twilight, offering variations of light and shade, which is reflected in the music. 

Next, Reed included his own transcription of the last two sections of Bolcom’s Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (originally for SATB chorus and organ), which was composed in memory of William Albright and dedicated to his son, John. Bolcom’s miniature on Abide With Me followed, then the gospel prelude on Amazing Grace. Reed’s articulation was both precise and expressive, elucidating the subtleties of the dense scores, and he deftly negotiated their copious technical demands. 

The last section of the program returned to Albright with selections from Organbooks I and III, which are particularly representative of his works as “a new means of idiomatic expression for the organ.” Albright described them as “part of a much larger scheme implying many more pieces each of which explores other sound and style capabilities peculiar to the instrument: some simple, some complex, some even working with popular idioms; all, however, hopefully demonstrating the richness and variety of organ sound.” Again Reed proved to be more than up to the task of presenting these works in all their intricacies with precision and ease, playing “Underground Stream,” “Melisma,” “Basse de Trompette,” “Jig for the Feet (Totentanz),” “Nocturne,” and the unpublished “Chorale Prelude,” intended to be the fifth movement of Organbook I. This entertaining work served as a reminder of Albright’s penchant for injecting humor into his writing (he includes quotes from film music) and the juxtaposition of opposites. 

 

Fourth annual Michigan 

Improvisation Competition

The fourth annual Michigan Improvisation Competition took place Sunday evening at the First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor, providing contestants with the ample resources of the church’s Schoenstein organ (III/42). The Ann Arbor AGO chapter provided a dinner beforehand for conference attendees. 

Preliminary round judges Joe Balistreri (a member of The Diapason’s “20 under 30” Class of 2015), Gale Kramer, and Darlene Kuperus evaluated recorded entries. Each contestant created a set of variations on a hymn tune and a free improvisation on an assigned original theme. From a field of thirteen entries, five contestants were invited to the final round, which involved similar improvisational challenges—a set of variations on the hymn tune Salzburg and a free improvisation on a given original theme. Final round judges Huw Lewis, Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, and Scott Hyslop evaluated players on thematic development, musical form, stylistic consistency, control of harmonic language, rhythmic interest, and effective use of the instrument. Having heard the final round each of the competition’s four years, I can attest to the fact that the level of playing has improved each year, rendering the judging challenging. 

First prize was awarded to Matthew Koraus of New York, second and audience prizes to Alejandro D. Consolacion, II of New Jersey, and third prize to Brennan Szafron of South Carolina. Additional finalists were Robert Wisniewski of Ohio and Benjamin Cornelius-Bates of Pennsylvania. It is interesting to note that most of the finalists are also composers. The prizes were sponsored by the American Center for Church Music. 

 

Monday lectures

The opening lecture Monday morning took place in Blanche Anderson Moore Organ Hall. Andrzej Szadejko of the Gdansk Music Academy, Poland, gave a lecture-recital, “The Less Known Pupils of Bach: Why we (don’t) care about our masters or generation changes,” sponsored in part by the Poland U. S. Campus Arts Project at the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Szadejko has performed extensively in northern Europe, made nine recordings, published articles in Polish music journals, and was awarded a prize for his thesis on two pupils of Bach—Friedrich Christian Mohrheim and Johann Georg Müthel. Mohrheim, who was the copyist for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, was music director at St. Mary’s Church in Gdansk, and composed chorale preludes and trios for the organ. In contrast to the music of Bach, Mohrheim’s works are characteristic of the style galant and empfindsamer Stil. Müthel’s works are very dramatic, in the Sturm und Drang style. Szadejko played works by Volckmar, Gleimann, and Gronau to demonstrate the style prevalent in northern Europe—a mixture of north German, Italian, and new ideas—then works by Mohrheim and Müthel. Szadejko is a skillful, expressive player, and his performances were the highlight of the session. He is deeply immersed in his research, delving into all the details, and one got the feeling he would have happily shared his findings as long as he had a listener.

Joseph Gascho, assistant professor of harpsichord, gave an engaging session on playing continuo in Watkins Lecture Hall, a room outfitted with a grand piano, harpsichord, and portative organ, as well as the ability to project examples from a computer. Gascho asserted that the shape of the bass line drives a piece, referring to it as a “vertebrate being.” In his teaching, he uses singers and dance to illustrate unequal emphasis on notes, or the sense of strong and weak beats. In this session, he worked through a recitative from Messiah and Purcell’s “Lord, What Is Man” from Harmonie Sacrae with graduate student soprano Ariane Abela, demonstrating how the continuo player’s choices affect the singer’s performance and the expression of the piece. His advice to the audience was “You’ll play better with an unrealized continuo part” and “Take the challenge of finding the joy in making decisions regarding what to play.” He discussed different ways to realize continuo and their effects, soliciting feedback as to whether organ or harpsichord was better suited to the music demonstrated. Gascho’s personable approach made this an enjoyable and valuable session. 

 

Student recital and masterclass

James Kibbie and Kola Owolabi’s students played a recital Monday morning on the Fisk organ in Blanche Anderson Moore Hall, which featured repertoire celebrating the 350th birthday of Nicolaus Bruhns. The complete extant works of Bruhns (six pieces) were supplemented with works by Böhm, Buxtehude, and Tunder to fill out the program. All the student performers—Dean Robinson, Paul Giessner, Sherri Brown, Jennifer Shin, Andrew Lang, Joe Moss, Mary Zelinski, Stephanie Yu, and Phillip Radtke—played well. At least half of them had been students of Michigan organ alumni. James Kibbie made a point of thanking the alumni in his introduction to the program, crediting them with helping to increase enrollment with student recommendations and scholarship contributions. 

Three students—Joe Moss, Mary Zelinski, and Jennifer Shin—had the privilege of playing for a masterclass with Diane Meredith Belcher later the same day. Belcher encouraged the students to do research about their pieces to provide context, and to practice piston changes, treating them as another note to learn. Working with Joe Moss on David Conte’s Soliloquy, she suggested conducting your own playing, breathing with the music, and attention to details to make the music come alive. With Jennifer Shin, who played Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, she recommended “skeletal” practice—playing only the strong beats to feel comfortable and insert rest into the process. For Mary Zelinski, who played the Grave from Vierne’s Symphonie V, Belcher recommended having your physical motions match the mood of the piece, and for romantic music, pushing through long notes and dwelling on shorter notes. Belcher also spent time talking about making sure you are grounded on the organ bench, using Wilma Jensen’s maxim of being able to bend and touch your nose to the keyboard without falling forward. She also suggested applying techniques from Feldenkrais movement to organ playing.

 

Monday performances

Late Monday afternoon, we returned to Hill Auditorium to hear Andrew Earhart, a fifth-year student pursuing degrees in organ performance and naval architecture and marine engineering, perform Petr Eben’s monumental The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, for organ and speaker. Eben’s final and largest organ work, it is a fourteen-movement musical allegory, originally improvised during an organ festival in Melbourne, Australia, in 1991. The work was inspired by a 400-year-old book, written by a Czech bishop named Comenius, which fascinated Eben. The book is a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress, relating the experiences and final redemption of a traveler encountering various people and situations. Eben says, “the whole atmosphere of the text is not an idyllic stroll through the world but a bitter, satirical, bizarre, and sometimes almost apocalyptic view of the world—and such is the character of the music.” 

Despite Eben’s description, the music is basically tonal, though certainly full of chord clusters, spiky melodies, strident reed sounds, and sharp contrasts. The fanfare-filled prologue introduces some of the work’s musical themes, which are taken from chorales from Komensky’s Amsterdam Cantional. Excellent and emotive narration by Malcolm Tulip of the theater department helped bring the story to life. At about 80 minutes in length, the work is certainly taxing for the organist. Earhart ably handled the voluminous score, truly engaged in the music, and played with conviction and passion. 

Prior to James Kibbie’s performance Monday evening, I spoke with several people who had heard him perform the same repertoire in Grand Rapids and Detroit recently, and to a person, could not wait to hear the program again. Kibbie did not disappoint. His exquisite playing, from memory, provided no obstacles to a pure musical experience, and the thrill of hearing a performer completely absorbed in the music was a true delight. Kibbie is absolutely at home with the selections of Alain and Tournemire that comprised the concert. Alain’s sonorities are refreshing and light-infused, and hearing six of his works in succession was enlightening. The program began with the Première and Deuxième Fantasies, succeeded by the Première and Deuxième Preludes Profanes. The serene Postlude pour l’office de complies was followed by a dramatic rendering of Litanies to round out the first half. Kibbie’s tempo for Litanies was torrentially fast and frantic, but clear and crisp. He achieved Marie-Claire Alain’s directive that “this piece must be played with great rush.”

As with the Alain works, it was satisfying to hear Tournemire’s Cinq Improvisations all in one sitting, offering the listener insight into Tournemire’s style and idioms as an improviser. The Petite rapsodie improvisée sparkled and the Cantilène improvisée featured the organ’s sweet flute sounds. The improvisations on the Te Deum, Ave Maris Stella, and Victimae Paschali were declamatory and heroic in contrast, with the perfectly paced Victimae Paschali the most striking of the three. Again, Kibbie proved himself at one with the music, giving an authoritative performance, absolutely assured and stunningly played.

Tuesday lectures

Tuesday morning sessions were held in the lovely Assembly Hall in the Rackham Building, which was built in 1935 in Art Deco style. Departing from his usual organ music appreciation session often peppered with sonic curiosities, Michael Barone began with an overview of the most recent Pipedreams tour—Historic Organs of Poland—which took place in June 2015. His photo travelogue also included recordings of some of the instruments the group visited. Many of the instruments have beautifully ornate organ cases with gold leaf and intricate carvings, some still housing the original instrument and some now fronting new instruments. There is a wealth of information about this tour and the instruments visited on the Pipedreams website (see pipedreams.publicradio.org, “Polish Memories”).

Following Barone’s travelogue, Brooks Grantier gave a wonderful lecture, “Cornflakes and Cornopeans: the Collaborations, Collusions, and Collisions of W. R. Kellogg and E. M. Skinner.” His talk focused on the people, personalities, and relationships involved with buying and building organs, based on correspondence from the Kellogg Foundation Archives. Grantier established the scene by relating the tale of W. K. Kellogg’s older brother, who ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, which became world famous for promoting healthy living. W. K. was the financial manager, discovering corn flakes by accident when some wheat paste was left out overnight. Kellogg refused to market the new “cornflakes” beyond the sanitarium. Following C. W. Post’s theft of the recipe and subsequent success with Post Toasties and Grape Nuts, W. K. Kellogg started his own business, out-marketing Post selling cereal and becoming tremendously successful with the Kellogg Company. 

Having built a lovely home in Battle Creek, Kellogg—not a musician, but a faithful church attendee—sought a house organ. Professor Edwin Barnes, who lived next door, recommended E. M. Skinner to build the house organ. It was to be the finest player organ in the country, fully automatic, and one of the largest house player organs Skinner built. Kellogg also helped fund instruments for the Presbyterian and Catholic churches in Battle Creek, contingent upon them being built by Skinner. When he purchased a home in Pomona, California, Kellogg had Skinner build another house organ there. He also funded the large Aeolian-Skinner organ (four manuals, 72 ranks) in Kellogg Auditorium in Battle Creek, completed in 1933 and designed by E. M. Skinner. This project helped keep Aeolian-Skinner afloat during the Great Depression. Lively, spirited correspondence between Kellogg, William Zeuch, and E. M. Skinner provided insight into the wrangling and strong opinions that were part and parcel of the interactions among these three men. Brooks Grantier is an engaging and entertaining lecturer, and the fascinating tale of Kellogg and Skinner made for delightful listening. He closed by noting that E. M. Skinner died in financial hardship with his work repudiated, while Kellogg died in comfortable circumstances, known for his unparalleled philanthropy.

After lunch, Elizabeth McClain, graduate student in musicology, shared some of her dissertation research in the session “Messiaen’s Pre-war Organ Works: Organist, Theologian, and Non-Conformist,” illuminated through a study of L’Ascension and Les Corps Glorieux. She gave a detailed analysis of the organ works, but it was her commentary on neo-Thomism, neo-scholasticism, ressourcement, and non-conformism in Catholicism in the early twentieth century in France that provided the most insight into Messiaen’s music and world view. McClain asserted that Messiaen’s choice of style indicated his political leanings and discussed how he expressed the totality of human experience through the lens of spirituality, transcending the bounds of sacred and secular. Her rapid delivery made me long for the opportunity to read and digest her material, but her rigorous research is a great contribution to Messiaen scholarship.

Scott Hanoian, director of music and organist at Christ Church Grosse Pointe and conductor and music director of the University Musical Society Choral Union, offered a choral reading workshop at First Congregational Church. At Hanoian’s request, Cliff Hill (of Cliff Hill Music, a highly recommended and knowledgeable music supplier) selected a dozen recently published anthems, which he provided in complimentary packets for conference attendees. As Hanoian led the group in reading through the anthems, he offered suggestions on how to rehearse each piece and when it might be useful. 

Tuesday performances

Kola Owolabi played a program of interesting works on Tuesday afternoon at Hill Auditorium. He began with Fantasia on Sine Nomine by Craig Phillips, a very attractive set of continuous variations, featuring Phillips’s characteristic rhythmic gestures and irregular meters, transformation of themes, and piquant harmonies. The sixth and final variation is a fugue on the opening phrase of the tune, which morphs into toccata figuration to close the work. Bairstow’s Sonata in E-flat, the largest of his thirteen organ works, followed. It employs the full dynamic range of the organ and typically English solo sounds. The first movement has a wandering, pastoral melody, while the second, in stark contrast, is energetic with fanfare-like figures played on a solo Tuba. The third movement, a fugue, is in the form of an elevation—starting softly and calmly, increasing in energy and volume, then ebbing away.

Owolabi began the second half of the program with the rousing Concert Piece in the Form of a Polonaise by Lemare, a bombastic crowd-pleasing work. Next up was Capriccio by Polish composer Mieczyslaw Surzynski. This work is the first movement of Surzynski’s Ten Improvisations, published in 1910. It is romantic in style, with some striking harmonies. Calvin Hampton’s Three Pieces rounded out the concert. “Prayers and Alleluias” is reminiscent of Dupré’s Cortège and Litanie, employing a similar form. “In Paradisum” pays homage to Alain’s Le Jardin Suspendu, while “Pageant” takes cues from both Alain and Mathias. Owolabi’s playing throughout the program was polished and assured. He performs with nonchalance and ease, which allows the music to speak without the performer getting in the way. This was a polished, enjoyable program of refreshing and not often heard works.  

Before the evening concert, Tiffany Ng played a carillon concert consisting of works composed in the last eight years, including two world premieres. Ng has joined the Michigan faculty as assistant professor of carillon and university carillonist. Young and enthusiastic, Ng brings a strong interest in contemporary music and innovative approaches to carillon concerts. She has pioneered models for interactive “crowd-sourced” performances. While in California, she arranged for the collection of data from the Hayward seismic fault, ocean levels, and climate change, which involved hundreds of people sending in information. The data was translated into a musical score, which she sight-read for a concert. She says, “Now that we no longer need the unilateral time-keeping function of the carillon, I like to have a conversation with the audience.” She hopes to initiate collaboration with the engineering school just across north campus and adjacent to the Lurie carillon. A new outdoor gathering area surrounding the area currently under construction has the potential to provide a built-in audience for collaboration. Additional carillon music was heard the previous evening, played by Dennis Curry, carilloneur of Oakland University and Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills.

Diane Meredith Belcher’s concert attracted the largest audience of the conference events, attesting to her stature as an internationally renowned performer. She began her program with Passacaglia on a Theme by Dunstable, composed by one of her teachers, John Weaver. A powerful and well-written work on the Agincourt Hymn, Belcher played it with rhythmic tautness, seamless transitions, and passion. Belcher dedicated Franck’s Prière to victims of gun violence in the United States, particularly children and families. Her music slid to the floor as she got on the bench, and in unflappable style she quipped, “I’ll be a minute.” Though her tempo was a bit deliberate, from the outset she established a long flowing line, sometimes conducting with her arms. The Hill Auditorium organ provided the requisite beautiful sounds, and though she played with much conviction, the piece remained earthbound, lacking in ecstatic fervor at its climax. She was very much in her element in the Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor, however, playing with subtle yet crystal clear articulation, absolutely at ease.

The second half of the program included three movements from Messiaen’s Les Corps Glorieux—“Force et agilité des Corps Glorieux,” “Joie et clarté des Corps Glorieux,” and “Le Mystère de la Sainte-Trinité.” Belcher performed them with precision and clarity. She closed the program with Organ, Timbrel, and Dance by German composer Johannes Matthias Michel. “Swing Five,” based on the chorale Erhalt uns Herr, borrows rhythm from Dave Brubeck’s jazz classic Take Five, while the “Bossa Nova” (based on Wünderbarer König) is typical of that genre, although its harmonies are quite conventional. The “Afro Cuban,” using the tune In Dir Ist Freude, is largely a toccata based on rhythms borrowed from Bernstein’s “America” from West Side Story. The rhythmic gestures in these pieces, which Belcher handled well, bring them into the realm of jazz, but the tonal palette, though sprinkled with bluesy chords, is too vanilla to fully enter the style. The set of three energetic pieces made for a fun and unexpected end to an excellent concert, though, and a rousing close to the conference.

Kudos to conference administrator Colin Knapp (also a member of the “20 under 30” Class of 2015), who does an excellent job keeping on top of all the conference details, making sure things run smoothly, and thanks to the Michigan Organ Department faculty for collaborating to continue offering the conference.

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