Organ Concert

 Miriam is attending the POE: Pipe Organ Encounter, which is a week-long camp for teenagers to have some organ immersion and also to play magnificent pipe organs. The American Guild of Organists sponsors POEs every year--this year there are three--scattered around the country. So there has not been one in Utah for awhile. Turns out that my friend and neighbor Dorothy is the organizer of the event this time around. And I found out about it because my friend and library colleague Rachel W. posted about it on Facebook, and I noticed Dorothy's name and contacted her about it...and long story short, Miriam won a scholarship to attend it. Which was great, because she had to get here from Georgia, and that already cost money.

So she started on Monday, Rachel's birthday (Rachel H.), and I think she has been having a great time. On Tuesday, Dorothy called me because they "lost" Miriam--it was her turn to play the pipe organ in the choral hall, but she was in the concert hall, having been given conflicting information. (Miriam is not the type of person to just blow off something!) I was, of course, worrying needlessly until one or both of Dorothy or Miriam let me know (they both did) that she was "found."

Yesterday, I took a cart full of things up to Janice in cataloguing, but she wasn't there, and Colette said she was doing some choir thing with Rachel (W.) today...and I was like "Maybe an organ thing?" Yes, that was it. Somehow, Rachel and Janice had to end up driving the kids from Timp Lodge to campus yesterday, and also they had to figure out lunch, which Colette did the ordering for them. And when I went downstairs, I happened to run into Janice who told me to come and crash their lunch party, which was in the Flex Room. So I had a nice visit with Janice (who is also an organist) and Rachel W. and other grown-ups, and Miriam did come and talk to me for a minute. 

Everyone was saying that Miriam looks like me, which is a nice compliment to me, but I am not sure how she feels about being told she looks like an old white-haired grandma. 

Last night was the concert given by their guest artist, Isabelle Demers. Janice walked over directly from work, and I drove over and we sat with another organ person who assists the BYU organ faculty and I cannot for the life of me remember her name even though Janice told me several times. She was nice, though! I remember that! She who I cannot name because I don't remember her name helps with organizing concerts, and she mentioned how happy she was to see a good-sized audience; she was afraid it would be an almost empty hall because the organ is a bit niche. I told her that Dorothy invited our whole ward. (Later, after the concert, I would talk to a bunch of people from our ward, so her invitation worked.)

The concert was amazing. The students all sat on the sides, which would give them a better view of Isabelle's hands. Here is Miriam and the other girls from the POE. (The student breakdown was 23 males and only 7 females. The girls, it was reported to me, had become a pretty tight-knit group.) In this picture, there are actually six of the POE girls and one of the POE boys. The man in blue a couple of rows behind is Dorothy's husband, Richard. (Picture taken before the concert, not during. There were more people during.)

We sat in front, so we had a good view of Isabelle's back, and also her feet, which would become important! And wow, what a workout she gave herself, playing more than an hour's worth of music (including two encores)--playing the organ is NOT a sedentary thing to do!

Isabelle played two Allegro Vivace movements from two Fifth symphonies (of Charles Widor and Felix Mendelssohn, respectively) and then Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D MAJOR--the minor one I know well, but was unfamiliar with the major one.

Because she is Canadian, she wanted to include some Canadian music. Healey Willan, though born in England, lived out his adult life in Toronto. Isabelle said, "Well, he could not help it that he was not born in Canada, so he came as soon as he could!" And then she played a lullaby by Rachel Laurin, who was her friend, and Isabelle is currently working on a CD release of music by this now deceased friend.

And then she ended with Variations on a theme by Paganini by Sir George Thalben-Ball and holy doodle! That piece is about 3/4 played only by FEET. Trills and arpeggios and crossing one leg over the other, and reaching both feet as far as possible away from each other and chords and runs--Isabelle was sometimes balancing herself with both hands on the bench while her feet danced hither and thither. 

There is no NEED to play the organ that athletically, by which I mean that the organ was designed to play using your hands, supplemented by your feet, but that composer/organist, Sir George, wanted to see if it could be done to give the feet the bulk of the music, and yuppers, it could be done. But I do not think there are many organists who would take that challenge on!! I am sure Isabelle was exhausted after playing that piece! But she still played two encores (walking across the stage each time, as if she wasn't already worn out from playing for so long and on that last very athletic piece!): her own arrangement of "Somewhere over the rainbow" and then I think a Reger arrangement of a Bach invention. 

Janice and I were standing just outside the concert hall with Miriam when Isabelle popped out of a side door with Neil Harmon. So we were the first people who got to talk with her, and the first thing she said to me was that in that morning's master class, at 9 AM, Miriam was the first student to play, and that she was wonderful--did I come to it? (I didn't know about it, so no.) We had a lovely chat, and I said, "Did Miriam tell you that she is Canadian?" And she had not, and so the two of them had a lovely chat about that. And then I asked if I could take a picture of the two of them, Isabelle and Miriam, together, but then Neil said to let him take the picture so I could be in it, too. And so I said thank you, and here are the results. 

I had a chat with Dorothy's son, Daniel. I have known him for a long time (I knew him before I knew Dorothy) because he used to be a frequent attendee at the Hymn Sing program that I ran in the BYU library for a very long time--stopped due to COVID in 2020, and never resumed because we are now in a super red-tapey era, and I just don't want to have to deal with it. Anyways, Dorothy got Daniel to take the kids on a hike to Stewart Falls, which apparently Miriam was very excited about. Dorothy is a very outdoors kind of woman, and also she is still (at now past 80 years old) running more than one Cub Scout troupes! She just has found that she can't do the hikes anymore--she can still hike, but she is so slow and young people want to go faster, so she gets Daniel to do the hiking. 

Daniel said it was a successful hike. (The bar is low: nobody died = success!) He said that organists are a good group of youth to hike with because they value their limbs and know that they can't really do their thing--play the organ--if they have damaged their limbs. So, he didn't even have to tell them to be careful, because they are just, by nature and self-selection, a careful group.

Also I had a chat with Neil, who said that Miriam can do an in-person audition for BYU School of Music admission. I am to have her email him. He also said that she can go into the SoM and practice on their organs anytime next week. He thinks the other organ professor might have a busy week, but he doesn't, and I told him that Miriam literally has nothing to do next week except whatever she wants to do. So we will work that out.

Last of all, I heard Neil say to a tall, dark and handsome (and married) organist, that he thought the Canadians should meet: meaning this guy and Isabelle. Well, it was Dallin Bissett, from Raymond, who is the grandson of Bob and Mari Bissett. Mari was my sister  Colleen's roommate. I am afraid I told him tales of his grandfather sleeping on the couch in Colleen's apartment when he had some roommate issues going on. Dallin and his friend thought that back in the day they were maybe looser with the Honor Code. I think that back in the day we were generally big-brothered much less about everything than we are today! At BYU and everywhere else!! Anyways, he was fun to talk to. 

Tonight we have more organ stuff to happen, so stay tuned for an organ update!