I'm playing your song...

My upcoming performances 

Fat Tuesday (Feb. 9, 2016)
7:00 p.m. 
Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, Atlanta, GA
Rededication of Chapel Organ
Randy Elkins, Michael Shake, Scott Atchison, Nicole Marane and Jeremy McElroy all play the organ!

Valentine's Day (Sunday, Feb. 14, 2016)
6:00 p.m.
Duluth First United Methodist Church, Duluth, GA
Evensong with the Candler Singers
Barbra Day Miller, conductor
Randy Elkins, organist

Ongoing

Sunday Worship
11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.
Virginia Highland Church (UCC)
Randy Elkins, Director of Music/Organist
Liberal and progressive protestant worship with communion
Choir and Organ/Piano (Allen organ, Yamaha Grand)
Modern Protestant worship using video enhancements, organ, piano and other instruments, and an excellent choir and soloists

Tuesday Worship
11:05 a.m. - 12:00 noon
Cannon Chapel, Candler School of Theology
Emory University
Barbara Day Miller, Associate Dean of Worship
Candler Singers
Randy Elkins, organ
Protestant worship with communion
Live Streaming
Choir and Organ/Piano (Holtkamp Organ, Hammond B2, Baldwin Grand), drums, handbells, guitars, etc. when needed
Modern Protestant worship featuring music in many world styles with preaching from within the seminary community

Thursday Worship
11:05 a.m. - 12:00 noon
11:05 a.m. - 12:00 noon
Cannon Chapel, Candler School of Theology
Emory University
Barbara Day Miller, Associate Dean of Worship
Various choral and vocal offerings in many styles
Randy Elkins, organ
Protestant worship with sermon
Live Streaming
Choir and Organ/Piano (Holtkamp 2/22 ranks, Hammond B2, Baldwin Grand)
Modern Protestant worship featuring music in many world styles and preaching from within the seminary community

Which organ bench is Randy warming now?

I realize I started this blog to tell my story as an organist from the beginning. Sometimes I get distracted and lose interest. That time has now passed and I'm back to the tail...however, I'm jumping to the present. I'll put the pieces together for you one day, but not today.

I am about to celebrate my first Christmas Eve at the Virginia Highland Church. A United Church of Christ congregation in Midtown Atlanta neighborhood of Virginia Highland this is a very special church. I became the Director of Music and Organist in June of this year (2015) and have been rebuilding the program since. The choir has now grown from about 3 or 4 to 20 on the roster. We had almost 100% sing our special Christmas music service on Dec. 13 and we'll have 8, count them 8, soloists tomorrow night in the Christmas Eve service. All volunteers and many professional musicians. All dedicated singers giving this church and each other their gift of time and talent week after week.

The church does things differently. I began during the Faith and Film sermon series on Lego Movie Sunday! There's also a series called The Beatitudes of Broadway. We have presented broadway show tunes and medleys, used movie music to inspire and hopefully reached people in a fresh, new, progressive and liberal way.

As soon as I started I took a semi-tradition of concerts on Sundays in July and turned it into a summer music festival. Called the Virginia Highland Music Festival, we saw attendance grow from 3 or 4 the previous summer to 50 to 60 at each concert this year.

The first concert with Caitlin Andrews Bayles

2016 offers five Sundays in July so I'm presenting five very different programs. I'm also starting the Virginia Highland Festival Chorus that will meet Wednesday nights in July and perform in the church service the last Sunday of the month and close out the concert series that afternoon each year!

I'm also working on a concert that will present to women who perform to raise money for their mission of bringing music conservatories to prisons! More information soon.

There will be an organ recital the first week and this time it will include transcriptions of instrumental and choral works including movements from Pictures at an Exhibition, Handel's Water Musick, several opera choruses and Ave Verum Corpus of Mozart.

Next post will be about my other organist position, Chapel Organist for Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

My first church position...well...

Roswell Mill

I don't go back that far in Roswell...

Canton Street in Historic Roswell today

But I remember when this was Gene and Gabes the Lodge Italian Restaurant and it was originally the Masonic Lodge in 1870. And I remember being told that there was a movie theatre in that block as well. There was also Feckoury's store, Doris' barbershop... and the sheriff's office....oh no, that was in Mayberry.

Barber shop?

This is where I got my hair cut. It's just down the sidewalk from the previous picture. And Coke was a nickel from the machine! With all of us, Roswell has changed.

But I promised something about my first church position. Of course my first church position was volunteer! I was the pianist for children's church at Roswell Presbyterian Church and the method was "stump the pianist." There was no pre-selected list of songs or Order of Worship. The leader, Miz Mac, took song/hymn requests and I played them, mostly by heart. Trial by fire. I was about twelve.

Roswell Youth Day Parade - Presbyterian Church Float

Of course, like many other young organists-to-be I would take any gig I could get. Here I am atop the Roswell Presbyterian Church Youth Day Parade float pumping away on the church's old reed organ!

The Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America purchased the property at the corner of Elkins Road and Alpharetta Highway from my grandmother for the site of their new church in 1973. That church was called Cross of Life. Folklore has it that Grandma sold the property to a church so no liquor store could be built nearby.

Grandma's house. Church was to the left.

My first paying position was summer substitute organist at Cross of Life, I was fourteen. It was practically on our property - I could walk to work! (We lived next door to Grandma)

The organ was a Baldwin spinet. It had two half keyboards and thirteen short pedals. Not the grandest of beginnings but there you have it. 

Baldwin Spinet Organ

In the late 80's the church sold the building and property (in a sweet deal) to a developer and moved around the corner to Hembree Road. By the way, no more Baldwin spinet, there is a two manual Moeller pipe organ in the current Sanctuary. 

Next time...my first brush with the Methodists.

Organ Studies in High School

In the 10th grade I began organ studies with William Weaver. Lessons were in his home on his mechanical action pipe organ built by the Dutch organ builder Flentrop. (See picture below)

Mr. Weaver trained at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he became quite an expert on the Method of Organ Playing by Harold Gleason. The book's author was the chair of the organ department at Eastman.  

Before studying with Mr. Weaver I was trained using the Complete Organ Method by John Stainer. The big difference between the methods is their approach to keyboard technique, both for the manuals (hands) and the pedals (hoofs). I had a lot to unlearn.

Mr. Weaver often said all I really needed was a self-correcting pedal board!

Mom drove me to most lessons and sat on the sofa reading a book, knitting, (giggling?) and sipping coffee for those very influential lessons.

In addition to being a fine organist and teacher, Mr. Weaver was an artist. He was a weaver, did needle point, and mosaics. The home was full of his artwork.

Flentrop Organ in home of Bill Weaver and Doug Johnson
Special thanks to Dr. Johnson for sharing this picture with me.

This is a terrific picture of Doug Johnson, Bill Weaver's husband of 50+ years, on the bench of the Flentrop in their living room. It's a guess, but knowing that Mr. Weaver was a weaver, I assume he created the rug in this shot as well. 

If you've gotten an email from me it was probably signed "Simple Village Organist." I stole that title from Mr. Weaver. I like to think that I am carrying on a tradition that to me means "organist without attitude."

For the first masterclass I ever played in (age 15), I rode the bus down to Georgia State University concert hall with Mr. Weaver. I played a movement of a  Suite for Organ by Cleambault, and the clinician was Robert Glasgow. Mr. Weaver introduced me as the Fireman from Roswell, G-A. Some things you just never forget.

GSU Kopleff Recital Hall
Moeller Pipe Organ (3 manuals)
Not sure where the console is!

Next post I will talk about my beginnings as a church organist and choir director.

The beginnings of my organ study

Roswell Presbyterian Church-Historic Sanctuary (1840), Roswell, Georgia, USA

At Roswell Presbyterian Church, in the Historic Sanctuary, the choir sang from the rear gallery (formerly the slave gallery). The back row of the choir (four people) sat between the pipe chambers. The rope that rang the old ship's bell in the tower hung down above that back row. Oh how I worked to be asked to go ring the bell signaling that Sunday School was over. If I did I got to see the organ console and peek into the pipe chambers!

Historic Sanctuary interior.
Note the silver on the communion table (center in front of the pews). This silver had to be hidden during the American Civil War. The city of Roswell was occupied by Union troops and our church was used as a Yankee hospital.

In 1978 I was in the 9th grade and finally allowed to study the organ. My first organ teacher was the late Jacquie Hollingsworth. Lessons and practice were on the Moeller Artiste in the gallery of Roswell Presbyterian. I was given a key to the church and rode the MARTA bus (15 cents) from the end of our driveway on Alpharetta Highway to the intersection of Alpharetta Highway and Oak Street in downtown Roswell. Then I walked up the hill to the church and practiced, nearly every day. I had a key to the church before I had a key to the family home!

Console of a typical Moeller Artiste.

Each week Sandra Crawford (lead soprano in the church choir, family friend and musical guru) had to come hear me play the organ to pass judgement on my progress. She usually approved.

Bulloch Hall, Roswell, Georgia, USA (1839)
Home of Mittie Bulloch the mother of President Theodore Roosevelt

Very soon I was asked to play the organ for a wedding on the front porch of Bulloch Hall, a historic home in Roswell. The "instrument" was a rented spinet organ with two half keyboards and only 13 short pedals. The wedding was on a hot Georgia summer day. One of the groomsmen fainted, not from my amazing rendition of Here Comes the Bride but probably from a mixture of too much shine and the heat.

Coming next - my first two church jobs, my second organ teacher, and my first contact with tracker organs and a Steinway grand piano.

The Organists of Roswell Presbyterian Church

I heard many Atlanta area organists while growing up at Roswell Presbyterian Church. Many were organist at RPC when they were young and just starting out.

Herbert Buffington, now organist at Peachtree Christian Church (Atlanta), was organist at RPC while he was in high school and before attending Duke University and Peabody Conservatory (Johns Hopkins).

David Fishburn, the long-time associate organist/choirmaster at the Cathedral of St. Philip (Atlanta), was previously at RPC, following Herb Buffington.

Walter Huff served at RPC just after completing his degrees at Oberlin Conservatory and Peabody Conservatory. After RPC Walter had a long tenure as organist-choirmaster at Morningside Presbyterian Church (Atlanta) and chorus master of the Atlanta Opera. He is now on the choral faculty at Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music.

Current Sanctuary of Roswell Presbyterian Church, viewed from the church's historic cemetery

There were several other memorable organists at RPC while I was growing up (often they didn't stay very long). The names I remember include Ronald Rice, Patricia Manderson, Margaret Pavlovsky, Carolyn Chestnut and Brenda Brown. 

Each of these men and women had an influence on me...

• The ones I heard as a young child from the pew 
• The one who accompanied us in children's choir
• The ones who asked me to turn pages (supreme honor)
• The ones who accompanied me as I played the oboe or saxophone for church
• The one who got me through competitive college scholarship auditions (accompanying and coaching)
• The ones who took a risk and asked me to play the organ for church services

....I learned a lot. 

Several of the names and places in today's blog come up again years later!

Fasten your seat belts...

Today I'm beginning a blog about the many churches and institutions that I have been a part of or visited to play their organs. The venues reach half-way across the United States and jump the pond to England and parts of continental Europe. The blog will begin before my days as a student at Indiana University, or the study trips to Europe, or recitals, master classes, church jobs and teaching. It's incredible to look back and remember.

I'm not the best record keeper so acquiring details will put me back in touch with people with whom I've lost contact. There are itineraries, photographs, videos and stories to recover which will provide dates, locations and memories of people, visits, instruments, services, and performances.

Fasten your seat belts... (No, I'm not going to quote Margo Channing here)
... for a great ride!!!

FIRST...the beginning of my vocation

Roswell Presbyterian Church, Historic Sanctuary (1840)
Roswell, GA, USA

This is where it all began. There are no pictures that I know of, with me standing on a pew and Daddy holding the hymnal, running his finger under the words so I could follow the hymns. That was in the early 1970's at Roswell Presbyterian Church. It's the first place I heard a pipe organ in person. The organ was a Moeller Artiste in twin chambers, in the former slave gallery, installed in the 1960's. This organ has been discarded and replaced. The remains of it are alive across the street in the organ of Roswell United Methodist Church, thanks to their organist, Tom Alderman. I wonder what instrument the Moeller Artiste had replaced.