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Notable with Bob Morrison
What would you think if you could make a close acquaintance with a man who recently played the dedication recital on the massive organ at the largest glass building in the world in Garden Grove, CA? What would you think if you could make an acquaintance with a man who, at age three, under the tutelage of his father, was already playing the organ, and who, at age five, was playing in church? What would you think if you discovered that this genius was equally at home with Bach, Liszt, Vierne, Widor, Gershwin, Kern, Irving Berlin, Beatles? What would you think if you watched him play "Flight of the Bumblebee" with his feet at full speed?
Well, you'd be talking about Maestro Hector Olivera. There's an Olivera who is a baseball hero and another who is a master filmmaker, but there's only one Maestro Olivera - and he was our guest at St. Mark's in 2012.
I had heard him years ago when he played for an organ convention in Atlanta at the Fox Theater. One of the pipes in a chamber on the right stuck - kept playing - and Hector immediately shifted keys to keep sounding that pipe in the hopes of releasing it - which happened. And the audience, made up of organists, immediately knew what he had done and burst into applause.
He played at my downtown Methodist Church and did something magical. He had brought his Roland Atelier electronic organ and on it had pre-recorded all the orchestra parts for a concerto. He started the Atelier playing the introduction by itself, then stepped to our large Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ to play the solo part of the concerto.
And, with the help of my friend Tom White, who was his manager, we were able to feature him at St. Mark's on April 12, 2012. He played the first half on our refurbished organ, the second half on his Atelier, including projecting pictures of TV shows whose themes he was playing, and then, mirabile dictu: he had pre-recorded his own arrangement of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" from the Ninth Symphony. He activated the Atelier to play by itself, then went to our organ console and proceeded to duet with himself for fifteen minutes of pure musical excitement.
But it was what he did the next day that made a permanent difference to me and to our organ.
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