Organ-ized
Sunday May 27th 2012, 10:30 pm
Filed under: Life,Music

Today I got to meet the man whose family built the big pipe organ at our church: some anonymous benefactor decades ago had wanted the new building to have a fine one, no electronic pretender but a real honest-t0-goodness fine instrument to be proud of for generations. And so we have been.

The man’s company also built the organ in the new conference center in Salt Lake City, designed (we were told a few years ago by one of its organists) to be just shy of the grandeur of the one in the Mormon Tabernacle, not wanting to upstage the grand old lady of them all.

“You built a beautiful organ,” I told him.

“It all depends on who’s playing it,” he answered, motioning towards the one who was; “not everybody’s Jim.” (Jim looked over at us, smiling.)

I explained, “Jim taught my son to play on that organ and he ended up minoring in organ performance; for his final, his professor took him to Salt Lake to play the tabernacle organ.”

The man was smiling broadly now: someone who understood. He had centered his whole life around making the most beautiful music in the world possible–if…

And here it was, valued and worked towards and its possibilities being earned by yet another generation.


5 Comments so far
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Music is powerful stuff. I can’t imagine having the skills and resources to manufacture the instruments… but I’m so glad some do.

Comment by Channon 05.28.12 @ 5:03 am

The checkbox on his driver’s license must have a gold star in it. A really big, beautiful gold star.

Comment by twinsetellen 05.28.12 @ 5:32 am

in some ways music IS life — I’ve heard that one of the last thing Alzheimer’s patients remember is music

certainly it is a language that speaks across the chasm of every human difference

Comment by Bev 05.28.12 @ 9:20 am

What a marvelous story! And your son was good enough to play the BIG one!

I quite agree with Bev’s comment that music IS life. I’ve been making music CD’s for Avenidas, both old popular and classical, and the seem to love it.

Comment by Don Meyer 05.28.12 @ 10:14 am

Pride can be a good thing! 🙂

I realized a few months after my daughter was born that music was then lacking in my life, though I was singing to her all the time… Now, I put music on as often as I can, as diversified as possible, and let her imagination run with it!

Comment by Suzanne in Montreal 05.28.12 @ 2:54 pm



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