The ASU All Saints Catholic Newman Center begins its inaugural Organ Recital Series September 11th with Jason Phillips performing on the center’s newly-installed Peragallo pipe organ.
KBACH's Greg Kostraba recently chatted with Phillips about the series, the organ, and his performance, which will include works by J. S. Bach, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and others, including Phillips himself.
Greg Kostraba: This is KBACH's Heart of the Arts podcast, I'm Greg Kostraba. The ASU All Saints Catholic Newman Center kicks off its inaugural organ recital series on Friday, September 11th with Jason Philips performing on the center's newly installed Peragallo pipe organ. Jason is in the studio to talk about the series, the organ, and his performance, which will include works by J.S. Bach, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and others, including Jason Philips. Welcome.
Jason Philips: Thank you very much for having me.
Kostraba: What inspired this series?
Philips: Well, in February, we were blessed to have Peragallo Organ Company install a new 37-rank, three-manual pipe organ in our choir loft. And of course, the main aspect or role for that instrument is to provide music for liturgy: for our Masses, for weddings, for funerals. But also, we wanted to have the opportunity to share this beautiful instrument with our community. And so having a recital series is a way to invite people into the Newman Center and to allow them to experience the beauty of music in our wonderful sanctuary.
Kostraba: Now let's talk about the instrument itself. You mentioned three manuals and 37 ranks. For those not familiar with organ nomenclature, what does that mean exactly?
Philips: Well, a piano would be a one-rank instrument; it has one keyboard. A pipe organ can have two manuals that are a array of different sounds. Ours is three manuals, so there are three separate manuals plus a pedalboard that allow me to play a variety of different pipes and provide a variety of different sounds. 37 ranks indicates that there are 37 different instruments that I can essentially create my own orchestra with. And so there are pipes that recreate the sound of brass instruments, there are pipes that sound like woodwinds, there is a rank that sounds like string instruments, there are some mutation pipes that allow for things like tremolo and extra bright register sounds, and then the pedal of course provides the lowest notes that I can play. And I put it all together for different repertoire, for hymns as any organist would, to create a whole bunch of different timbres and textures, and it's just a magnificent instrument for everything from liturgy to playing some of the great organ literature that composers have composed over the years.
Kostraba: The organ also uses pipes from a Skinner organ originally built for a church in Pennsylvania. Tell us how that works. Was the old instrument decommissioned, and then the Peragallo company decided to take some of those pipes and incorporate them into this new instrument?
Philips: Right, as often happens, churches decide to either build a new pipe organ or it's become too expensive to maintain, or they refurbish their sanctuary, and then the pipe organ needs to find a new home. In this case, the pipe organ was built by an American organ builder named Ernest M. Skinner. And he is considered one of the finest organ builders in the American tradition. And those pipes were worth saving; they shouldn't be discarded and recycled. And so Peragallo worked with the church to take those pipes out of the casework and put them into their warehouse. And when the Newman Center contacted Peragallo to build a new pipe organ, they felt those pipes would be a great fit for the organ that they would build in our sanctuary, and they have turned out to be exactly the right fit. They just provide everything from the softest sounds and registers that I would need to accompany a choir or a soloist, to the loudest, most wall-shaking music that I would play for a recital or to send the bride and groom down the aisle as they go forth into their marriage. So it just provides tremendous opportunity to provide music used for liturgy, and concert, and play repertoire, and accompany choirs. It's magnificent.
Kostraba: The music you'll be performing on September 11th, you'll be interspersing it with short speaking segments on the topic "The Best of Us: Living and Giving After Trauma and Loss." Tell us a little bit about this program and what you were thinking of when you put it together.
Philips: Well, September 11 was the day that I joined the United States Army. I was in the Military Entrance Processing Station early in the morning for my physical and then signed my official Army contract, and took my oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. And then was sitting in a chair with my orders in my lap and my plane ticket to boot camp, fell asleep, and the next thing I knew, sirens and alarms were blaring, and of course, that signaled the first awareness that something terrible had happened. So it has a particular significance for me. I ended up serving in the United States Army for five years. I deployed to Iraq for 18 months and came home after my service bearing the psychological war wounds of trauma and loss that I had experienced in Iraq. And one of the things that helped me move forward in my life was looking for examples of other veterans, but also other individuals who have overcome trauma and loss in their life and have gone on to live their fullest life and been able to give the best of themselves to the world through their gifts and talents. And so that includes veterans like Jimmy Stewart, the actor; Messiaen, actually, was captured by the Germans at the beginning of World War II, spent some time in a prisoner of war camp; Ralph Vaughan Williams served during World War I. Also, one of the authors that I just discovered as I was researching my program was the last survivor of 9/11 that was rescued from the towers, and she wrote a book, a memoir called Angels in the Rubble. So all of these provide inspiration for me, and I want to feature a little reflection on one individual from my life that was important to me that gave me the strength and the courage to live my fullest life and to give the best of myself through music, my compositions and my performance. And I hope that inspires others, whether they are veterans or people who have experienced the full range of trauma and loss that we all are subject to in our lives, to find their way forward and live their fullest life and give the best of themselves.
Kostraba: Now, let's specifically talk about the music on the program. You mentioned Messiaen, Olivier Messiaen, the French composer was in a German POW camp during World War II, wrote a famous piece called Quartet for the End of Time, but he was a fine organist, too.
Philips: An exceptional organist and an exceptional composer for the organ. So I'll be playing one of his pieces called — excuse my French — Joie et clarté des corps glorieux. It's a short piece that has a very unique and idiomatic harmonic language that Messiaen developed for himself in his music. I just think it's a fantastic piece to start a program with and to launch our inaugural organ recital with.
Kostraba: And then you move to Ralph Vaughan Williams, but before that, you talk about J.R.R. Tolkien and the Battle of the Somme. I know the British composer George Butterworth died in that battle, and Tolkien had some connection with that as well.
Philips: Oh, Tolkien was caught up in the thick of the Battle of the Somme, and wow, you know, what trauma and loss he experienced during that war and how that could have just made his life virtually unlivable to live with those memories and that experience. And when he returned from war, he settled down, became a professor, and wrote his whole world, Middle-earth. It's not allegorical in any way, but it certainly has aspects of it that reflect his service in the military, but to me also, it just reflects that after the worst that a person could experience, he was able to live a full life and to give this best part of himself in creating this world that has become such a joy and inspiration for so many others.
Kostraba: And then after that, you play the Vaughan Williams piece, the beautiful "Rhosymedre," just absolutely gorgeous. Was there a connection between this piece and Vaughan Williams's service in World War I?
Philips: I've read about Ralph Vaughan Williams during his service looking out over the battlefields, the mud and the trenches and the craters, and he envisioned and audiationed, of course, this music that he wanted to compose when he got home, and it was supposed to evoke a better world, green fields and pastures and hills of England, and peace and tranquility. And that ultimately grew into his Symphony No. 3, the Pastoral Symphony. And I think that when I play "Rhosymedre," I hear music that sounds very much in that vein.
Kostraba: And then you move to the French Baroque for Jean-François Dandrieu, but first you talk about the groundskeeper. Tell us a little bit about that.
Philips: When I was in college as an undergraduate, I worked for a little bit at a golf course in Maine. And the groundskeeper just impressed me with his attentiveness to the details of everything he did, from cutting the fairway grass to trimming the greens, and all the forest and bramble that could overtake the fairways. And I just thought, wow, you know, this is a man who doesn't aspire to more than cutting grass, you know, here I was an arrogant undergraduate student aspiring to be a composer. Well, one day the golf pro came to me and said, "What do you think of our groundskeeper?" And I said, "Well, he really seems to love cutting grass." And the golf pro said to me, "Well, I want you to know that he's a World War II veteran, and he was one of the paratroopers that jumped out of the airplanes over Sainte-Mère-Église just on the day before D-Day." And that just struck me so profoundly, and I've carried it with me through my life, that here's another example of an anonymous man who you would never know his story and the experiences that he went through unless someone told you, but here he was in his own way living his fullest life and giving the best of himself. That golf course was so beautiful, people came from all over New England, all over Canada, and just reveled in the beauty of that golf course. And it was all thanks to him and his work, and he did such a beautiful job. So, another person that provided inspiration to me.
Kostraba: And then how does that connect to the piece that follows, the Dandrieu?
Philips: Well, it doesn't specifically connect other than I think Dandrieu is a composer that not many people know, and to me, his music, since I first started playing it when I picked up that book in my 20s, such an inspiration to me. I love his skill for melody, his structure of his pieces. So for me, this just represents one of those pieces that brings me a lot of joy, and I hope to be able to give it back to people through the performance.
Kostraba: And then let's talk about your piece for a little bit: a prelude and a postlude on the hymn "Praise to the Lord." Is this a new piece of yours? Is it something you've written for this actual performance?
Philips: I composed this piece in 2018 when I was the Director of Music Outreach and Cathedral Organist at the Cathedral of St. Helena in Helena, Montana. And they have such a beautiful sanctuary: tall stained glass windows, a cathedral that's modeled after a cathedral in Vienna, and the acoustics are spectacular, and then of course a beautiful pipe organ. So it was just a piece I composed for liturgies and then for my master's degree recital when I was studying at the University of Montana.
Kostraba: And then you end with Johann Sebastian Bach, who definitely had loss in his life; he lost his first wife.
Philips: Well, I think it's easy to think about Bach purely from the aspect of who he was as a composer and his music now. It's kind of abstract; it's just one of the greatest. He was a human being also, and he lived a life filled with loss and trauma that's almost unimaginable. Again, we talk about as in our time, one of the greatest losses adults can experience is the loss of a child, and he lost so many children during his life to just the times he was living in, the diseases, and the lack of understanding about everything from childcare to hygiene, and again, just that was the time. But he lived through it and suffered, lost two wives. So here's a person that, again, could have lost himself to the trauma and the tragedy that he faced, but boy, did he turn that into something that has resonated through the ages and inspired people. So I think it's important to remember not just Bach as the composer of all of these pillars of the Western canon, but also a human being, a man, a husband, a father who experienced and then overcame trauma and loss in his life.
Kostraba: And then you end with his famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
Philips: I do. I have to say that over the years, that's the piece that more people ask me to play. I learned it when I was studying organ at the University of Montana, but not well. And so I just decided for this recital, "You know what? I'm going to learn this piece and do it right."
Kostraba: Jason, thanks for your time.
Philips: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Kostraba: Jason Philips is the Director of Music Outreach and Organist at the ASU All Saints Catholic Newman Center, and he'll be giving the inaugural concert in the center's new organ recital series, Friday, September 11th at 7:00 p.m., the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The concert is free and open to the public, and tours of the Peragallo organ will be offered after the recital. More information is at asucatholic.org. For the KBACH Heart of the Arts podcast, I'm Greg Kostraba.