Organ Masterclass with David Briggs

David Briggs had a private Masterclass at St. James' Cathedral with me, Manuel Piazza and Gerald Loo on Saturday, April 28th.

Manuel Piazza is an organ student at the University of Toronto and he is the Bevan Organ Scholar and the Organ Scholar at St. James' Cathedral. Gerald Loo is working towards his Fellowship Diploma of the Royal College of Organists.  He also plays at St. Paul's Bloor.
I was the most junior person there! But, I was invited because I take lessons at St. James with Ian Sadler.

We all worked on different things.

I worked on two pieces that I will be doing in my upcoming recital on Tuesday, May 8th at 1pm at St. James.

Manuel Piazza played Choral no. 2 in B minor by César Franck, 

And Gerald improvised a passacaglia.

We each had about 40 minutes of one-on-one instruction with David.

I played Choral Song By Samuel Sebastian Wesley and Gaelic Fantasy by Hans André Stamm.

For Choral Song, David recommended that I change some fingering and registration to make it more stylistically appropriate for a mid 19th century piece.

Gaelic Fantasy is a contemporary piece. It doesn't have dynamic markings or suggestions for registration so he recommended making the whole piece a giant crescendo. It is a piece that makes you want to dance and you will love the celtic themes and the crescendo just works. 

David suggested ways to make Manuel's piece more expressive. One way was by using rubato in a slightly different way. He also changed the registration to reflect the composer's intentions.

David is extraordinarily good at showing us such small things that make a huge difference. It is these details that make him such a good organist!

For Gerald's improvisation, David pointed out that you need to have a plan. You need to think about are the implied harmony and the variations that you might do. One specific thing he mentioned was that using thirds and sixths can help make it easier for the actual improvisation.

A special thank you to Robert Busiakiewicz, who organized the Masterclass and to David Briggs for being so patient!
Thank you!

RCCO Masterclass with William Porter

Since it was March Break, I had my entire Saturday free. My orchestra just had our concert and so we have a couple Saturdays off. 

I was able to go to William Porter's Masterclass hosted by the RCCO (the Royal Canadian College of Organists) on March 10 at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church at King & Simcoe. 

It was my first time watching a Masterclass and it's quite different from a regular class as there is an audience. William Porter is a world-renowned performer and he is well known for his improvisations.

The participants in this Masterclass were, Manuel Piazza, Stefani Bedin, Zoe Lei and Martin Jongsma.

I got to the Masterclass early, so I was able to sit up front.

First we heard Manuel Piazza play the Bach Prelude in B Minor, BWV 544. Manuel is the Organ Scholar at St. James' Cathedral and Manuel played for the choir that I sang with in Chichester & Winchester in the UK over the New Year hoilday.

William Porter taught Manuel to slowly release the keys for certain chords so that it would be a more gentle release.  He also had some feedback about the text. He commented that on the original manuscripts from the earlier years Bach was less strict about notation, but later on, he became more precise. Sometimes publishers or editors may have added things. William Porter noted that you need to understand the piece instead of entirely relying on the notation.

Next we heard Stefani Bedin play Bach's Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, BWV 676.

(I believe Stefani's teacher is Kevin Komisaruk. Kevin played clavichord for my Grandma at her hospital bedside just a few days before she passed away. She was really comforted by his playing.)

William suggested that Stefani use some alternate fingering that would make it less tiring to play. He also had some feedback about the text and the consistency of certain elements like trills at choral entries.


We then heard Zoe Lei play Bach's Prelude in E flat Major.

William Porter asked her to focus on the rhythm of the piece. He also looked at the meaning of the phrase, "Pro organo pleno" and how it has changed over the years regarding registration. In Bach's time, it meant principals, mixtures and pedal reeds and then later on it evolved to include the manual reeds. She only needed to make a very simple change by adding the mixtures (stops with multiple ranks of high pitched pipes.)


The last organist we heard was Martin Jongsma. He was improvising a fugue and William Porter gave him feedback on how to improvise a fugue in the German Baroque style.
This was the most interesting part for me as improvisation is totally new to me. For the fugue, he suggested to keeping to 3rds and 6ths for the counter subject, and he also said that you shouldn't start a new voice from the same note but they shouldn't be too far apart from each other. I tried this when I got home, and it's so cool.

Thanks to the RCCO, William Porter and to all of the organists who played!
It was a great morning out!