A Kotzschmar Concert

Oh I just LOVE a good concert!

In Portland at the auditorium at City Hall there is the huge and beautiful organ called the Kotzschmar Organ and every Tuesday night in the summer a guest organist comes and plays a concert, and I got to go and see the one last night with my grandmother!

A man by the name of James (Jimmie) Jones was the organist, he was quite young and was VERY good, but the really neat thing was that a woman named Anita Cirba played along on many of the pieces on trumpet.

See the appeal this holds for me now?

Anyway, the concert was INCREDIBLE.

The organist was so so great and was very animated in his playing, which made him fun to watch. It was especially fun to see him glissando the really low pedal notes that are played with the feet. 

This is him:

The trumpet player, Anita, was simply fabulous. She had beautiful tone quality and was just so nice to listen to. She played trumpet, fluglehorn, and piccolo trumpet, and I especially enjoyed listening to her play the fluglehorn. One of the cool things too was that she played a couple of pieces from the balcony instead of the stage which created a very cool effect.

This is her:

They had a great program too. Some Mendelssohn, Holst and Durufle, along with more contemporary composers. I really liked on of the pieces 'Tea and Trumpets' which featured very 'punny' title such as 'Trumpet Mandatory' instead of the usual trumpet voluntary. I knew some of the music too like Hovhaness' 'Prayer of Saint Gregory' and Durufle's theme from his 'Veni Creator'. I was so excited when they started to play the Holst piece though because it turned out to be the ballad from 'Jupiter' from 'The Planets'. 

Of course, our marching band did the planets two years ago and the Jupiter ballad was my favorite part of the whole show.

It was very nice on organ and trumpet too...

All in all it was a fantastic concert and I would love to see them perform again sometime!

It's raining here today, but that's OK. Good for reading books and doing homework and stuff like that :)