I’ve played a number of organ/piano duets in recent years, both at Second Presbyterian Church of Bloomington and First Presbyterian Church of Wheaton. While others have been mixed in, the vast majority of these duets have been the work of composer Joel Raney. From feedback I get after playing his work, people seem to like it. A lot.

But, more importantly for me, his music is just plain fun to play. I played in a concert yesterday at called “Alive In God’s Grace”, which featured the Gargoyle Brass ensemble, as well as a number of First Pres friends/musicians playing organ, piano, and trumpet. David Lincoln and I played “In His Hands”, a seven-movement suite for piano and organ. We had previously played it at First Pres for the installation of our current head pastor. The exciting/out-of-the-ordinary part of this for me was that during our final rehearsal, Joel Raney came to listen and give us his feedback.

It was exciting to hear a composer share what he really wanted from each song. On a couple of occasions, he’d come up to the piano and play a little excerpt of a song so I could see exactly how he played it, and he had similar articulation feedback for David on the organ.

He had me slow down on the first movement and my solo, which helped me find even more to appreciate in the music. On another song, he told me he wanted it so detached that I don’t even touch the damper pedal. One piece of Joel’s feedback I made sure to write down was for a very aggressive movement:

The publishers wouldn’t let me have the articulation notes I really wanted… if they would have let me, I’d have made this one say ‘Bang the hell out of it’ for the piano.

So I happily took that feedback and put it into play yesterday. The final movement has always been a favorite of mine: it’s fast, loud, and very high-energy. For the final section of it, he shared with me where he got the idea for the piano part, so I think I’ll have to look back at some classical music and check that out.

All in all, Joel was very down-to-earth and complimentary of our playing. I was excited to receive feedback from him and I really think it added to our performance at the concert yesterday.

My grandma also reminded me this morning of the audience response throughout the piece: they were asked to hold applause until the end of the final movement, but after each movement I’d hear little “oh”‘s and gasps from the pews. Rumor has it the concert may find its way to YouTube. In the mean time, you can see some other pieces I’ve played at both churches that I’ve already uploaded.