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.