The (short) story of how I became a Substitute Organist

This is the story of how I became a Substitute Organist (the abridged version).

I grew up in a small town in New England, near Worcester, Massachusetts.  My first musical instruction came at age 7, when I started taking piano lessons, and I soon fell in love with the instrument.  My family regularly attended a congregational church, a typically beautiful old New England church with a tall white steeple right in the center of town, right next to the Old Burying Ground and the Town Green, and I grew up singing all the old protestant hymns every Sunday, singing in the children's choir, and performing on piano often during the services.  My mother was a decent pianist and for years was the emergency accompanist/hymn player until I was about 10 years old.  Then I became good enough to take her place in this infamous position.  During those years, we had a really wonderful music director/organist named George Davey.  He was a kind, soft-spoken Jamaican man with a very deep voice, and as a child I was always in awe of his musical abilities.  From what I can recall, he seemed completely effortless in his playing, always re-harmonizing hymns, connected them together through improvisations, inserting modulations between verses, and making the organ sound as if we were in Notre Dame Cathedral, even though, from what I can remember, back in those days we had a pretty lousy electric instrument with no real pipes (I never played on it).

The 'new' organ at my home church.

Around the time I began high school, George left us to take a prestigious position with a large church in Manhattan, but his contract stipulated that the church install a new organ before he left.  He performed a complete recital on the new organ just before leaving and asked me to turn pages for him during the recital.  This was my first experience being up close and personal with an instrument like this, and George had planned out all of the registration and set the pistons himself (things that I had no knowledge of at the time).  However,during the recital and in the middle of one of the pieces, he turned to me and in his deep, soft voice said to me (while he was playing with his hands and feet! My young mind was blown!) that he needed me to press the "Number 3" button on his cue, that he had forgotten about!  Of course, it seemed to me that there were a MILLION "Number 3" buttons on this complicated thing!  Flustered, I managed to find one, put my finger on it, and on his cue hit it, and, in my imperfect memory, it unleashed all those glorious stops for a triumphant, powerful, and joyful finale.  This moment had quite an impact on me.

After high school, I went off to college at Baldwin-Wallace College and enrolled in their Conservatory of Music, studying to be a composer with piano as my primary instrument (and indeed, it is as a composer and pianist that I primarily am trained and make my living.  See my website www.keanesouthard.blogspot.com for my bio, performances, and recordings of my compositions.)  But part of my requirements for my degree was to study a secondary instrument for two years (for non pianists, piano is their secondary instrument, but for pianists it can be any other instrument.)  I chose to study the organ as my secondary, partly because my hands already knew their way around a keyboard, partly because I thought it would be cool to play notes with my feet, partly because I thought I may want to have a part-time job as a church organist/music director some day (thank you, George), and partly because it's the 'King of Instruments' and you can nearly knock down walls with the sound from some.  Later, I learned that BW has a really fine history when it comes to organs, as the founder of the conservatory was Albert Riemenschneider, who is famous for his scholarly editions of the organ works of J.S. Bach.  

At BW, I had an organ lesson once a week (I believe it was a half-hour lesson, but it may have been an hour) plus an hour-long studio class every other week.  Because organ was behind composition, piano, and most classes in terms of priority, I usually managed only about a half-hour to an hour of practice per week (whereas my teacher wanted me and assumed I was practicing that much every day).  But somehow over those two years I became a competent organist, and during my second year of lessons I shared, with another organ student friend of mine, a position as substitute organist at a small Episcopal church in Cleveland for one semester (BW is about 20 miles outside of Cleveland, OH.)  The pay was minimal, and for a student in college, I didn't appreciate waking up at 7am on a Sunday morning, but the church had a nice small tracker organ and it gave me some good experience.  I also started subbing as needed whenever I was back home in Massachusetts at my old church.  

After finishing my Bachelor's degree (in addition to my major in Composition, I added a major in Music Theory, as well as a minor in English Literature.  I definitely tried to get my money's worth out of my college education!), I went straight to graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder for my Master's degree in Composition, where I was also a teaching assistant in Music Theory.  Being both a student and a teacher (making enough money to just get by,) I didn't have the time to find and hold a full music director position at a church, so I made a very half-hearted attempt at trying to get my name out as a substitute organist in the area, and nothing came of it.  I didn't have the money or the time to take organ lessons at the university, but I met with the organ professor about what churches to inquire about subbing at and to see if I could get a key to practice on the organs on campus.  But as someone who wasn't taking organ lessons and because they had had some issues in the past with people stealing pipes (why would anyone do that?), she wouldn't let me have a key.

During my second year at CU, I found an opening for a pipe organist (just playing the organ, not directing the choir) at a Methodist church a town over and figured I could find the time to practice one night a week and play Sunday morning (when I'd just be sleeping anyways) while making a little extra money.  So I decided to audition, despite the fact that the single hour I had to practice on the organ a couple of days before was the only practicing I'd done in over half a year!  Somehow I got the job, and it was very good for me in improving my organ chops, especially in learning pedal parts more quickly, and I learned lots of hymns and new pieces.

I completed my degree after my second year and now I have moved back home to the Worcester area.  Because I'm hoping to head overseas next year and I wanted to apply for some short-term artist residencies as a composer for this year (and I was accepted to two of them, Playa, which I just returned from a 4-week residency, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, where I'll be spending 6 weeks as composer-in-residence in March-April,) I have not sought a steady job and instead have taken the opportunity to see how much work I can make for myself as a freelance musician (performing piano recitals, composing on commission, etc.), as a substitute teacher in the public schools (similar in many ways to being a substitute organist, perhaps that is another blog post in itself), and as a substitute organist.  I joined the Worcester chapter of the American Guild of Organists to get on their Substitute List and have been steadily finding work.

Me on my 'home' organ

And it was just today, going to practice at a new church for a service I'm subbing at this Sunday, when I had the idea to start a blog about life as a substitute organist.  As anyone who has done this work knows, all organs are different, nearly all churches, church services and clergy are different. (Except for Roman Catholic services; you can go anywhere in the world and the services are all the same [or all equally confusing to a non-Catholic like myself.])  You have a lot of little quirks and things to figure out, and usually very little time to do so, yet then you must perform on the most unforgiving of all instruments, where all your mistakes are as loud as all your right notes.  So, welcome to the "Diary of a Substitute Organist"!

-Keane