I totally enjoyed my christmas treat from my local cultural guides, Julie and Donovan. We approached this amazing building directly from the carpark through the bright foyer. There was time for a quick and tasty snack at the ground floor cafe before winding our way up several sets of stairs, between curved landings and balconies - it seems there is a clear absence of horizontal and vertical lines
throughout this whole building!
We had seats clinging to one of the side walls - the view down over the lone and large organ was impressive - everything was built of light wood and every piece of wood seemed to be curved in some way. The organ pipes looked like none other I had seen...in the middle was a brass porcupine and the big pipes either side were curved and square...
The ceiling looked as if fabric was draped over some high wires - except it was also wooden and it almost looked as if it had been tiled...we had a superb view of the audience and the entire stage.
David Higss served as both the organist and the
evening's MC - he had a great instructive style and he clearly enjoyed playing the organ and demonstrating his unique skill set. I loved the way he taught us to sing along to the first carol, Joy to the World. He introduced us to the Sporano soloist, Lisa Christine Thelen, for her debut performance at this venue. She was a recent PhD student from USC and has a great voice and am impressive future. I also loved the way David demonstrated a foot pedal solo to Bach's prelugue and fugue in D Major - this was totally amazing, not only does he have 4 complete keyboards but he played a full keyboard with both feet! He also demonstrated how he used the stops to play up to 4 different octaves for each note at the same time. Perhaps my favourite piece was the delicate way he played the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. What a superb introduction to my christmas holiday!
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