Church organists can devote full or part time to their calling
Piano Lesson
Church organists can devote full or part time to their calling
My dad is a school superintendent and has been a singer. My mom was a teacher but had organ training, so pretty much from the very beginning we had an organ and a piano in the house.
Should a student who wants to play the organ begin on piano? I tell my students to do that. I started that way at 4, but my friend who is a professional organist in California has never taken a piano lesson.
When you're beginning, the practicing should be every day. Today, I have no set practice schedule. I feel good if I have three, four times on the (organ) bench each week. Sometimes, it's a way to get away from paying bills and doing laundry.
The reason I like the organ is all the different sounds it makes. That attracts me more than getting a lot of notes right, which I do try to do.
My background has been that I've done so many things within my area. I chose to do that, although I've always been a Sunday morning church organist from age 10 until now.
I spent nine years at Second Presbyterian Church (in Indianapolis), playing a four-manual Aeolian-Skinner with 81 ranks (sets of pipes). That was full time. I spent a year in Oregon at a Lutheran church.
I have also paid the bills with a ton of accompaniment work on piano. I played the Wurlitzer at the Paramount Music Palace (an Eastside restaurant that closed in the 1990s). I drove back and forth to play at a pizza restaurant in Milwaukee.
Now, 20 percent of my work is concerts -- regional and local, classical and theater organ. I've been lucky enough to play solos with orchestras, like the Saint-Saens ("Organ" Symphony) with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
Another 40 percent of my work is with the Indianapolis Children's Choir, where there are 10 or 11 accompanists for 17 choirs. There's no official title, but I serve as kind of the staff arranger. I work with directors including Henry Leck and Ruth Dwyer. Another 10 percent is choral arranging.
The other 30 percent is at North United Methodist Church, where I'm organist, assistant director of music and director of handbells. This position is a 20-hour job. It's ideal. They're flexible when I have concerts.
In Indianapolis, there are a few big full-time positions at churches. . . . There are interesting instruments to play.
There's another handful of part-time organist jobs where they are like ours, with a separate music director. I'm one of the few I know of who has an exclusively musical career. Everything I do relates together. But a lot of people have office jobs and play Thursday (rehearsal) and Sunday (services), so it becomes kind of a professional hobby. . . .
There's a shortage of good people. Some of the kids from the ICC come up to me, and they've never seen a pipe organ. It's weird, because every church in my town had one.
So many things compete for a kid's time today that to take piano lessons might not be as easy as it was. We're living in an immediate-gratification society. I see the kids playing Game Boy and Xbox. It's immediate gratification, which piano practice is not. School music programs have been chopped all to hell.
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