Yesterday was so full that I was unable to blog at leisure. This morning I am doing this right after Greek.
After spending a nice leisurely breakfast with Eileen and our ritual games of Boggle, I headed off to church. On the way, my student Rudy phoned me. He was scheduled to have a lesson at 1 PM, but was in town and was wondering if I could work him in sooner. My boss and I were going to meet sometime before lunch but we hadn’t set up a time yet. I told him I would get back to him. Jen was able to see me at 11:30 so I phoned Rudy and told him to come over since it was about 10:30.
When I got to church I was surprised to find Martin Pasi working on the organ. I had understood he was going to be out of town until today. He simply came back early from his work in Detroit. So Rudy and I had a lesson in the choir room.
I had informed Rudy at the end of last summer that I didn’t want to teach him anymore because for the entire summer he had not practiced and only touched the piano when we were together. He winters in Washington D. C. where he has a different piano teacher. Apparently he finds more time to practice during that part of the year. When he called me to arrange for lessons now that he had returned to Holland, I reminded him how we had left it. He had forgotten.
In order not to some too ungracious I asked him if he thought he might have more time to practice this year. He said he thought he would. I then agreed to teach him. But of course I will be watching to see if his behavior changes.
The frustrating thing is that I enjoy chatting with him. I see him as a friend. During our lesson he observed that he could understand that I did not want to be paid to be his friend so something must be getting through to him.
Happily he had new material he has been learning to show me. His D.C. teacher had a brilliant idea and introduced him to some etudes. He doesn’t like to work on technique only literature and highly romantic literature at that. So these Moszkowski etudes seem to be just the ticket for him.
We had a good lesson. I do enjoy TEACHING when allowed.
After that I had an intense meeting with Jen. We had a lot of territory to cover. In addition to our usual debriefing of the immediately previous Sunday and examining the plan for the upcoming Sunday, we discussed upcoming recitals and Eucharists.
Sarah has designed the poster for our first recital.
Jen liked it a lot as do I. I wrote an announcement for the bulletin about this recital. I also announced that we would have a recital onJuly 30th at 3 PM called “A Young Person’s Introduction to the Organ (Adults Welcome)” and a solo recital by Rhonda Edgington on August 27th at 3 PM.
At the “Young Person’s Intro” recital, Eileen and I will perform what they call an organ demonstrator entitled “Hiker’s Gear.” Cooman describes it this way: “A Hiker’s Gear (2004) for organ and opt. narrator was commissioned by Wayne Leupold Editions as part of their series of “organ demonstrators.” The movements of the work correspond both to families of organ stops (and organ characteristics) as well as elements of the equipment of a hiker.”
I want this to be a “hands on” experience for people, young and old. So I will be inviting listeners up to the organ to give it a try as well as allowing people to climb up into the organ.
Other music at this event (“Hiker’s Gear” is about 8 minutes long) will include performances by some of our more skilled young people. There are a couple of college students home for the summer that I plan to invite to play. Also I am thinking of breaking out my drum collection and doing an African hymn together. That should be plenty for a recital of a reasonable length.
Length is something that’s on my mind for these recitals. Amy, my violinist, and I came up a Mozart sonata excerpt for her and me to play. It begins at about 5:33 in the following version.
We both like it. It’s part of the first movement of this sonata but will stand easily alone and is not too long.
Besides recitals, Jen and I discussed the upcoming visit of Trinity English Lutheran’s children’s choir to sing with us at Eucharist on June 11. Lots of planning.
I spent the afternoon rehearsing with Dawn and Amy. Dawn and I managed to sneak into the church while Martin was on lunch break and play the Frescobaldi we are learning for the June 4th recital. Amy forgot her music for my piece so we played the first movement of Faure’s wonderful piano trio.