Organist Issues

I like Ms. Emily, my "organist" at Christ Church. For the most part, she plays what I ask her to play. She never complains about there being too many sharps or flats. She doesn't mind if I ask her to speed things up or slow them down. She doesn't know every hymn in the hymnal, nor can she play anything out of any of TEC's supplemental hymnals (Wonder Love & Praise, Lift Every Voice and Sing, Voices Found); but that's okay, I doubt if my congregations could even sing anything from those other hymnals.

My organist St. Paul's, however, has other issues. To his credit, he's never told me he can't play anything, or refused to play something. But he's an older gentleman and lately we've started noticing some .... unfortunate ... trends.

He's started to slow down over the past several months. He's played some hymns in the wrong order. He's missed notes and stumbled over others. And, just physically speaking, he's slowing down. He had trouble getting up the sidewalk in the snow and fell a couple of weeks ago.

Last week I tried calling him for Sunday's music. No answer. No answer several times. Nor on Tuesday and Wednesday. Finally on Thursday, a friend of his called and said that he's in the hospital. A colleague of mine stopped in today for me to visit and he's supposedly having some kind of exploratory heart surgery on Thursday. It would appear that my real life organist will be out of commission for awhile.

Today I took Ms. Emily to VC with me. I got back into the pump room where I had seen speakers, wires and one of the biggest tuners you have ever seen. Hauled it all out, connected up some wires to where I thought they might go, plugged it all in and, unlike the last time I tried something new with Emily and she damn near exploded, she worked fine.

I am excited to have music in both places now. And I'm wondering how I might broach the subject with my real organist that this might be a good time to retire from playing.