Smile!

There is a new movement afoot. It is poised to take over the organ world and change everything about how we currently “look at” some things. I’m talking about promotional photography for organists.

Look through The American Organist magazine from various years to see what I’m talking about. In the old days, virtually no one took out promo ads for themselves. Promo photos appeared in management rosters, nearly for the sole purpose of a host being able to recognize a performer when picking him/her up at the airport! They were all the same: headshots facing or profile, dark clothes, light background. (As time went on and the subjects aged, some of those photos didn’t get updated, a constant source of discussion among those of us who were looking at them every month.)

Fast-forward to today, where organists are shown hanging off of consoles, standing near famous sculptures, holding organ pipes in precarious positions, holding hands in the worst possible technical positions, and sitting spread-eagle on the bench facing the camera. One of my more successful photos has been of me leaning cross-armed against a Casavant console.

This new movement currently co-exists with the old one. There are still the traditionalists, who pose in coat and tie for headshots and in tux for staged action shots. In all these, the background is the usual gray for the headshot or the usual console for the action shot. The clothes are the usual simple, so as not to cause visual problems when printed on local newsprint.

When I first started posing for promo photos, I kept a certain necktie in my closet, which I did not choose to wear in public anymore, but which would be perfect for the next photo session. In those days, however, the most successful photo I had was one a bit off the beaten path. I was in my suit and simple tie, but I was staring directly at the camera, daring it to challenge me. That kind of pose sent a completely different message, and I liked it! I looked confident, even if I wasn’t.

I am no photography expert, and I hear constantly from experts whose opinions on all this are in diametric opposition to each other, thus leaving me in the middle and having to make all the decisions (which is the plan in the first place, I suppose). But I am learning to lean toward those photos that look like ME, rather than that fit a textbook composition formula.

Advice: always have someone who knows you well help choose photos. They know what you look like, and they can see You in certain photos and not in others. The one of me leaning against the Casavant has been criticized as conveying a sense of having something to hide in those crossed arms. But I concur with the other experts, who said, “That looks like YOU. That’s what people will be getting when you come play.” I’ll take that. And with digital photography, hopefully anything really transgressive can be tweaked.

So I have gone to the other side, and I’ll probably be dragging some others with me over the years. I will take the photos that look like ME and not like the photographer’s composition ideals. However, I don’t think I will ever go so far as to be photographed having tea in an organ chamber or throwing my head back and my arms out at a console, as if a loose wire had found its way to the bench.

Real life: the organist’s laboratory

I keep discovering that real life informs all my teaching and mentoring. The training years cannot be conducted in a vacuum – students need to see how real life works so that they can discuss it thoroughly in the safe haven of school, then go out and set or extinguish fires where they need to.

Classes are nice, but we end up learning an awful lot on the job. The theoretical of class still needs the practical to finish the job of teaching. Conducting fellow students for a grade is probably not as eye-opening as conducting an adult choir set in its ways. Being prepared to direct a church music program is nice, but being required to do it with a week’s notice when the boss gets deathly ill is different. And although I wouldn’t change this, I notice that my sacred music majors must perform a classical degree recital, not a liturgical one. Meanwhile, for an instrument whose printed music dates back to 1325, I get ONE semester to teach the history of its literature. I also get ONE semester to teach service playing to all keyboard sacred music majors. That’s not much time to get many points across.

So where is everyone supposed to finish learning it all? They’re going to learn it on the job, simply by doing it. This is where I try to infuse classes with real-life problems to be solved. I was baptized by fire into leadership at a church where the Organist/Choirmaster got sick and died. At another church, pastoral scandal and mismanagement threatened our jobs and our sense of beauty in worship. But after those experiences, I discovered that I was ready for anything. Church politics no longer surprise me, and it seems important to me to warn students that politics are coming their way in this business.

There is another way in which we organists can be ready for anything. I have accompanied some of the worst wedding singers ever hatched. I have played the Lord’s Prayer in all keys and in all tempos, sometimes all in the same performance. I have vamped while soloists dropped music and started making up words. I have followed the worst conductors down the primrose path and back again. I believe that I could see a conductor through a brick wall, if I had to. Students need ways to practice these things, as well, and I’m committed to inventing more ways of making their lives a fake hell until they get a job and discover real hell.

Now, let’s move on to performance anxiety. Outside of the worst cases, I believe it takes frequent visits to a nervous environment to get over nerves. How can we create a performance-anxiety environment? Get the students performing! No, not on stage but in studio class. Having an audience present, no matter how small, creates a nervous environment that doesn’t exist in the lesson. Just as the students gets used to me in lessons, so can they get used to other people being present. And not just in studio class – students are encouraged to drag people in from the hallways to listen to a run-through of something. Perform, perform, perform. Even performing for a recording device changes your approach. And let’s not forget that Sunday mornings are a weekly performance of sorts. Simple math: perform enough, and you stop being nervous about performing. Control your urges to rush under nerves enough times, and staying under control becomes second nature. Nerve management is about the only training you can accelerate in classes, and it’s not all that difficult. It’s even free.

Learning how to dress and how to behave in public are also important, best taught by example. It’s also important to learn how to learn music, not just how to play an assigned piece. That’s a Pandora’s box I will open here some other time.

Finally, I get asked a lot about sight reading. You learn to sight read by sight reading, not by reading about it. (You learn to waterski by waterskiing, not by talking about it in the car on the way to the lake.) I recommend playing through an entire hymnal to accelerate sight reading. The harmonies are basic and predictable, and the voice leading is 95% pure. It’s a great way to improve sight accuracy and get familiar with intermediate harmonies. Meaningful improvisation quickly follows!

Go ye therefore and play. Just play.

Another moment of clarity

Here's another of those moments when I was able to come up with what looked like a helpful response to something I had not thought about before. (Click here for another similar moment of clarity.) A high school kid asked what sort of salary he should negotiate at a church where he was interviewing to be the organist. Here is my response, more or less verbatim:

************************

Several things will send the salary up and down:

1) your age and experience will keep it low;

2) time spent driving back and forth will send it up;

3) gas money might be added to the salary as an allowance, or it might just be rolled into a larger salary. And a local person wouldn't need gas money at all. I would definitely negotiate some gas money, since you'll be driving there more times per week for Christmas and Easter and special events.

4) based on some of the photos I saw on the church's website, I'd say that the church is full of older members and is shrinking, so they probably don't have a lot of money, which will drive the salary lower;

5) the depth of the music program will also help decide the salary. If you have to practice a bunch of hard anthems, that will drive the salary up. If it's a really easy job, though, then it won't need to be paid as much. [On the other hand, if you’re one of those people who has already played everything and doesn’t have to practice, maybe the church should pay more for that privilege, as well.]

6) Do you think you'd play there throughout college? It might be nice for the salary to rise a bit during those years, as you build experience and training.

I recommend a salary AND a gas allowance. But perhaps rather than try to calculate what gas would be, just raise the salary a bit and leave it at that. I'd say that based on the above list, perhaps $500 or so per month might be a nice, round figure, give or take. No benefits (can't get benefits unless you're at least 1/2 time). Service for service, $500 per month would be about $150 per week, which would include service, rehearsal, gas, and practice time. Perhaps you'd like to quote them about $550-700 per month just to start, and then let them negotiate. Surely they have a salary in mind, or they don't know where to start, either, since the retiring lady played out of goodness of her heart. [Many churches are discovering that music is no longer a volunteer effort after the elderly incumbent retires.]

*************************

Tricky business. This is a wheel that may have to be reinvented church by church, case by case.

Odd facts

A couple posts ago, I talked about the silly thoughts that come to mind during the heat of battle of a recital. During this past week following my mother's death, I have been reminded that one's mind also comes up with all kinds of things during a time of family crisis. Dates and odd facts stick in your head:

March has become an interesting month: My birthday is March 4. Mother's birthday was March 21. Mother died on March 20, only an hour short of her 72nd birthday. Dad died on a March 28.

Mother shared a birthday with Bach. I share my birthday with Vivaldi. And Dad died 60 years to the day after Rachmaninoff did.

We buried Dad and Mother in similar colors. Didn't plan that, but as I was staring forward during Mother's funeral, I remembered that. We also buried them in the same style caskets -- natural cherry by the Batesville Casket Company.

Does this sort of thing happen to you, too, or am I just a freak?

Mother always hand-wrote her calendar. She transferred appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, etc., BY HAND each year into a new Avon calendar. Other facts such as "25 years since Jingle [family dog] died," "17 years since surgery," "12 years since Dwayne was ordained." etc., were handwritten year after year. And every calendar was saved in an ever-growing stack in an ever-burgeoning cabinet. In part, this is all a "Southern thing." It is also a bit of an obsessive-compulsive thing. But Mother's meticulous if hand-written record-keeping is serving us well for estate managing purposes. We don't lack any information; even if there are many piles of papers, the piles are categorized. And when the time comes, cleaning out her house is sure to be a greatly detailed trip down memory lane.

I have picked up some of Mother's attention to details not so much by sending birthday cards as by calling family members on anniversaries of their loved ones' deaths. [My previous attraction to the funeral directing profession is always just below the surface.] There is something to be said for living a fact to learn it. Mother lived a lot of memories and kept up with them, and I am following suit to some extent. If only I could have learned facts this well in Organ Lit and Music History classes.

3/21/40 - 3/20/12

Judith Tilley Bell-Moore died Tuesday, March 20, at Iredell Memorial Hospital, after a brief illness. She was born March 21, 1940, in Statesville, N. C., to the late George Franklin Tilley and Janie Nantz Tilley. She graduated as Valedictorian from Scotts High School and graduated summa cum laude from Kings Business College in Charlotte.

Judi was preceded in death by her husband Donald Ray Bell of Statesville. Surviving are their two children, Talana Bell Wilkins (Mike) of Dothan, Ala., and Joby Bell (Susan Murphey) of Boone, N. C. Also surviving are grandson Eddie Wilkins (Jennifer) and their children Elizabeth and Cooper Wilkins.

In 2008 Judi married Weymouth Eugene Moore of Statesville, who survives along with his sons Timothy Moore (Kim) of Goldsboro, and Terry Moore of Chapel Hill. Also surviving are Judi’s sister Sandy Boyer (Marvin) of Statesville, childhood friend Louise Shoemaker, and several nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews.

For her entire professional life, Judi served hundreds of customers as an Avon representative and briefly as a district manager for Avon. She sang in the Celebration Choir and the Joyful Singers of the Front Street Baptist Church, where she was also a proud member of the Jabez Sunday School Class.

The family will be gathered at the home this week and will greet friends on Thursday, March 22, from 6:00-8:30 pm at Bunch-Johnson Funeral Home in Statesville. A service of celebration of Judi’s life will be conducted on Friday, March 23, at 11:00 am at Front Street Baptist Church in Statesville, with the Rev. Tim Stutts officiating. Pallbearers will be Dwayne Bell, David Hall, Jason Kress, Scott Mitcham, Terry Moore, Tim Moore, Danny Stikeleather, and Mike Wilkins. Honorary Pallbearers include Robbie and Darlene Forsack, Brenda Jolly, Wanda Martin, Terrie Ross, Peggy Sharpe, Carroll Starrette, members of the Jabez Sunday School Class, and the Young-at-Heart of Front Street Baptist Church.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent to the Gideons International. Bunch-Johnson Funeral Home is serving the family.

Why do I keep doing this?

Things go through my mind as I wait backstage.

I still get mild butterflies. Not because I'm nervous but because I'm READY to play but have nothing to do but sit and wait. If I'm waiting backstage where I teach, then I'm playing Words With Friends and cracking one-liners with the crew. If I'm waiting backstage anywhere else, I'm staring at the four walls, looking for something to do, and thinking about all kinds of things:

Why did these people come to hear this organ recital? Did they come to hear me? Did they come to hear this organ? Did they come to recruit a friend to the organ? Did they come to get picked up? Did they come thinking this was going to be a revival service? Did they come thinking they were going to hear the only two organ pieces they know of? What does Fred Swann think when he's waiting backstage? How many times has Diane Bish done this? Is anyone ever going to fix that squeaky swell box? What if we were on a deserted island and made an organ out of bamboo? Oh, dear, they have THAT anthem in their choir folders? Wonder if anyone can hear this toilet flushing?

I also think about all kinds of things during the heat of battle. At a recent Lenten recital, I had a few memory slips because I had been re-thinking my posture at the console, and when I would change "the routine" to send a few brain cells toward sitting up taller, I would have to think harder or at least differently about the notes. Very interesting study. Another time, as soon as I hit the first note, I saw a fly writhing in death throes on high C of the Great; the same fly that had been terrorizing me earlier that day during practice time. (Nothing to do but play on and knock him off afterwards.)

At all times, I keep checking my motives to confirm that I still want to do this. Do waiting backstage and going out and playing ever get old? Do I want to continue doing this? Do people who play pretty much every week get tired of it? Tired of the traveling? Tired of the practicing? All those hours of practice for one hour of performance? Do Olympians get tired of that sort of schedule, too?

I wouldn't call this ADHD. I'd call it heightened awareness during a higher stress time. Recitals are not stressful to me -- they are exciting. But they do create a certain stress on the nervous system, and the brain runs wild, unattended, as a result.

I'd talk more about this if I could remember more. But those backstage thoughts are a bit like dreams -- they're real in the moment, and then we forget them. Got to go practice now and prepare to do what I still want to do.

I need a good laugh

Disappointing news has recently come to me, and I am choosing to laugh rather than rant. (Those who know me may be proud of me for that.) So here are three funnies I have pulled from my memory and from my multiple retellings over the years:

1. During my second Sunday as organist of First Presbyterian Church in Houston, I was climbing the learning curve on how the various clergy do their thing in worship. One Associate Pastor had the (bad) habit of scripting nothing and overblowing everything. Everything he did, from prayers to announcements to benedictions to sermons to liturgical segues, were always on two wheels and in constant danger of derailment. So he was praying over the tithes and offerings after they were presented after the Doxology. At some point, he implored God to “help us put on the yoke of Christ – and to strap it on good and tight.”

Now, the choir and I did not know each other as well at that point as we would later on. Had they known that that was “my kind of line,” they all would have glanced my way and seen me a) react in horror, and then b) turn around to laugh uncontrollably.

2. My dear friend and colleague John Yarrington loves to tell funny stories of things that happen in church. He tells of attending the singing Christmas tree pageant at First Baptist Church in Little Rock. Before the program started, he was perusing the program booklet and noting all the committees and so forth that are involved with such a huge undertaking. He reports, “As God is my witness, there was a Tree Erection Committee!”

3. A particular performance of the Dubois Seven Last Words of Christ incorporated a modicum of staging, lighting effects, and costumes.

Plus the string parts played by the organist.

On a synthesizer.

During the final chorus, the lights gradually dimmed, as planned, so that the piece ended in total darkness.

But in the stillness and the darkness, a button on the synthesizer apparently got pressed, and the performance then continued with BOOM, chicka BOOM, chicka BOOM, chicka BOOM…

Because it was dark, the organist could not find the kill button, and so in the midst of BOOM chicka BOOM, there was also the quiet cursing of the organist trying to rectify the situation. Had I been there, I could have died happy, if I hadn’t died of a heart attack from laughing so much.

The next time you see something funny in church, PLEASE make sure I’m there to see it, too. I would appreciate that.

Who am I?

Schools of music are re-discovering the importance of sacred music to their organ curriculum. Many undergraduate curricula include at least a course in service playing. Many undergraduate and graduate curricula include a handsome overview of liturgy, sacred music literature, materials, and methods. Some organ teachers prefer not to “deal” in sacred music. And some organ teachers revel in their sacred music component.

I deliberately stand somewhere in the middle, while leaning toward the organ performance component. I recognize the importance of all organists being able to play for church/synagogue, but my teaching addresses those practical skills as equally important to developing a reliable technique for organ repertoire. As for early technique – well, that’s nice to learn, and I enjoy using it and teaching it. But it lies behind legato and hymn/anthem accompaniment for usefulness in establishing a career for the vast majority of graduating organists. Those who are drawn to a daily diet of early music know who they are, and they will have my support. I will teach all students early technique and when to use it, but I will not push anyone nor insist they specialize in anything, especially at the undergraduate level. And let’s not forget that most graduating organists will not be playing copies of Silbermanns and Hildebrandts at their church jobs.

As for myself, I have "specialized" in being able to do lots of things and pass on that ability to others. (My music-to-learn list is noticeably longer in the French Symphonic column, but I keep things balanced.) We all probably define ourselves differently from how others define us. I am Joby Bell, teacher/mentor, concert organist, service player, and recording artist, in that order. I am also collegial workmate, court jester, and all-around good guy. But every now and then, I am recognized in public as that guy who does the Halloween thing and the Messiah Singalong. And when I appear in the Statesville, N.C., Record & Landmark newspaper, I am the son of Donald and Judi Bell first and musician second. To some, I am still that little kid with the curly hair who played piano in the Baptist church (it has been TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS since I last did that). Upon my return after a number of months away at graduate school, I was horrifyingly re-introduced to my home church as “our home missionary to the Episcopals [sic] of Houston, Texas.”

That was an unfortunate Big Bang for my progress toward self-definition. But I did start thinking more about it, and I realized that an artist’s self-definition changes with the wind. Nowadays, I am introduced as “Dr. Bell, our sacred music coordinator. He also teaches organ.” Well, that’s better than being someone’s 'home missionary to Episcopals,' but there is still some image defining to be done here. While I have plenty experience in sacred music and have plenty to offer others in that field, my performing and applied teaching are my forte, and so far, I haven’t wavered in wanting to keep that so. That's not so bad, is it?

Not bad for a 19-year-old, huh!

Too often we decide something is wonderful just because it’s familiar. We think our family member should have gotten that job no matter what. We think no girl/boy is good enough for our precious little Billy/Suzy. We visit a huge city for the second time, and we want to go back to the same two restaurants we visited during the first trip. Regardless how well they did in medical school, doctors sometimes come highly recommended because they pray with patients. A dentist once came highly recommended to me because “he is such a nice man.” (And sure enough, as I endured my first visit with him, I discovered that he really is a nice man – and a terrible dentist.)

We start looking for our six degrees of separation right away. I lived in Houston for 14 years, and a stranger wanted to know if I knew their nephew, who lives 30 miles out of town. (Not likely to know him, no.) We also try to box something huge into our own limited understanding, such as thinking an entire state revolves around one city. During my years in Houston, a casual conversation with a Presbyterian stranger would usually go something like this:

“So, Joby, where are you from?”

“I’m from Statesville, North Carolina.”

“Oh, is that near Asheville???”

“Well, it’s 100 miles east of Asheville on I-40.”

“Oh, we have a house in Montreat [all Presbyterians do], and we just love Asheville. Where did you go to college?”

“Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina.”

“Oh, is that near Asheville???”

…and so it would go. The remaining questions had to do with snow skiing and other things an organ student would be ill-advised to attempt.

In the music world, talent can be overlooked in preference to the familiar, bigger name. It is sort of the artistic equivalent of the rich getting richer. The famous get more famous while the talented keep struggling to be heard (not to slight here the famous who are also talented). This is borne out by the enormous amount of drivel we hear in pop music today, which is also another example, I confess, of the familiar being “better.” (I prefer 80s rock/pop over anything I hear in today’s music.)

As artists, we are charged with responsibility for our own publicity and press. That is a half-time job, and few people will do it for us without taking all our profits. But as audience members, we are charged with the responsibility of listening to others' work and deciding for ourselves how wonderful it really is. You kind of have to ignore some of the press sometimes -- "renowned" is not that informative a word.

I once heard a fine(?) example of local, homegrown, trite love ballad songwriting. The emcee exclaimed during the rapturous applause, “Not bad for a 19-year-old, huh!” I couldn't help my inner response: “Neither was Julius Reubke.”

Other careers I haven’t pursued (yet)

Divine providence? Predestination? “You always end up where you belong”? Perhaps. But there are also lucky breaks and the phenomenon of "it’s who you know." And since my gut was divinely created, then gut instinct is also divinely inspired.

Up until the fifth grade, I was going to be a fireman, probably because I like red and the word "fireman" feels good to say. By the fifth grade, I was going to be a movie star. Soon after that, music kept coming up, and the prophet in his own land did enjoy a bit of success for five more years. Then the chance came along to attend high school with other developing artists. During that time, music remained a career option, even though I knew that pianists were a dime a dozen. But I had the added advantage of playing for church, and that kept doors open. Meanwhile, the pipe organ kept beckoning as a source of mechanical fascination, artistic satisfaction, and income potential.

I "broke up" with the piano gently, moving from a piano concentration in high school, to a double major in piano and organ in college, to all-organ performance in grad school. Throughout all this, although the question of "making it" at the keyboard without another day job was always nearby, I never questioned the fact that music was going to be a part of my life each week.

After grad school, I kept training -- this time in airplane cockpits. I quickly learned that flying was just as fascinating as I thought it would be. I also discovered that flying would have been a fun career. Hmm, a fallback plan!

A few months later, I was still searching for what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had the application form filled out and the finances arranged to attend funeral directing/embalming school. The very day I was planning to mail in the application and fee, I received a call from a former professor, now a Dean, asking if I could see my way clear to fill a sabbatical vacancy for a year, teaching organ and sacred music. My answer of Yes was calm and considered, but inside, I was jumping for joy. Plans changed immediately -- no funeral directing school required now. Eight years later, I’m still pursuing the teaching career I had wanted since beginning graduate school.

"Did he really say funeral directing school?" Yes, I did. Lifelong fascination with it. And it's not too late, you know.

And rangering in Big Bend National Park just might be part of my retirement package.

I also would have made an excellent surgeon.

Or veterinarian.

Or math teacher.

Or truck driver.