A couple of weeks ago, I attended the BYU Organ Traveling Workshop in Raleigh, NC. And here is my report.
Since I live a couple of hours away, I chose to stay in a hotel, catch the organ recital Friday night, and then attend the workshop early Saturday morning.
Also, to make it fun, I decided to visit my work's building in Raleigh, attended the temple nearby, and met with family. And after the whole event, I met with a good friend and we got some tasty brick oven pizza.
I'll start with a few pictures I took.
Here's me attending the temple ...
Parking at the organ recital was more packed than I had expected ...
A rainstorm while we were there ...
And a crazy sunset on the way back home ...
I wish I had taken more photos, like -- some actual pictures from inside the workshop? But oh well. I present all this introductory material just to say: I know these workshops may be a long ways away from where you live, but hey! Why not make a fun trip out of it? You can learn lots of new organ techniques and see the sights along the way. Life is a journey -- live it up!
BYU Organ teachers host a traveling workshop that visits different cities around the US, so that others can enjoy some of the same instruction that occurs at their annual conference each August in Provo, UT. This is all due to the generous donations of one benefactor who believes in educating new organists and help transfer this knowledge to others.
You can visit here to see where they are going next. In our case, the one in Raleigh featured an organ recital on a Friday night, and about 6 hours of workshops the following morning. Our teachers were: Neil Harmon, Connor Larsen, Felipe Dominguez, and Kymberly Payne.
I knew I was in for a treat when I saw how many cars were pulling into the church parking lot for the Friday night recital -- and yes, seating was quite packed. It was an hour-long recital with some impressive organ music. Larsen's performance of Harmon's Variations on "Book of Mormon Stories" seemed to steal the show.
The next day, I attended all the "Beyond the Basics" seminars, where we discussed advanced pedaling technique, creative registrations, simple reharmonization techniques, alternative voicings of hymns, how to encourage and teach new organists, and more.
There was even a beginners course for children, which at the end of the day involved building a small functioning portable organ. Part of me wish I could have witnessed some of that.
I also got to see a lot of organ players from the extended Raleigh area, including several organists from my own stake. I was joking around with one of my friends for most of the seminar. And we remarked that we had both learned words for things we were already doing and also some new techniques.
I also learned that I had been sitting too far back on the organ bench, and I know what I need to do next to improve my organ playing.
Oh -- and big tip. If you attend one of these seminars, you're going to be tempted to start using some of these new ideas right off the bat. Well, for me, the next day was stake conference, and I made that mistake, and it failed miserably. It got so bad that I couldn't find the pedals on the closing hymn and ended up just dropping the pedals. Dang. Luckily most people thought it was just a unique registration choice. They were like: "You were making mistakes?"
So -- you're probably going to want to practice first before actually employing some of these new techniques.
Oh -- and did I mention that the whole thing is free? (Except for amounts you might have to pay for outside food, a hotel room, and gas. But hey -- looks like we were in the same hotel as some of the organists.)
If one of these workshops comes around in your neighborhood, come check it out. It'll be fun!!
