Barone earned a bachelor’s degree in Music History from the Oberlin Conservatory, where he also got his start in radio during three years at WOBC-FM, the student-run campus 10-watt station.  Upon graduation in 1968, he was hired by KSJR-FM at St. John's University, Collegeville, MN, and has continued with the outgrowth of that station, today's Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media system, ever since.  After 25 years as MPR Music Director, Barone focused on national program production (Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; Pipedreams) and as Senior Executive Producer he is the second longest tenured of all current MPR staff.

Barone is a past President of the Organ Historical Society (OHS) and the co-founder of the Chamber Music Society of Saint Cloud.  He received the President's Award from the AGO in 1996, the OHS Distinguished Service Award in 1997, and the Deems Taylor Broadcast Award for Excellence from ASCAP/American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 2001.  He has served as consultant to the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ project in Los Angeles and is an acting advisor on organ programming for the Kimmel Center/Verizon Hall in Philadelphia.

The Pipedreams Live! concept has seen action in Atlanta, Buffalo, Dallas, Gainesville, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Chattanooga, Cincinnati, Little Rock, Pittsburgh and Las Vegas.  Pipedreams is heard on select public radio stations nationwide, and its large program archive is available 24/7 on the internet www.pipedreams.org.

With 114 ranks of pipes, the Visser-Rowland instrument at the Wooddale Church is the largest functioning organ in Minnesota.  By chance several years ago, I found myself acting as the recording engineer for a project that Herndon Spillman realized in this venue (Titanic CD-205), and through him at that time I was introduced to an extraordinary and compelling score by Thomas Kerr, Jr.  This composition was derived from an improvisation made in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior.  Built upon the resurrection spiritual “He rose!”, Kerr’s score is as powerful a piece of musical theology as can be found, with a somber resonance also relating to the struggle of the African-American people and their legacy of faith.  A compelling 2006 dissertation by Jane Fitz-Fitzharris at Louisiana State University offers background in detail, though I daresay that the music alone is powerfully clear and direct in its message.

My friendship with Calvin Taylor dates to our years as students at the Oberlin Conservatory, where Cal ‘made history’ by improvising an encore to his senior recital (these things were normally not done…).  I enjoyed his Sonnet of Praise as part of a larger orchestral score (which deserves wider exposure).  The arrangement you hear today was created for this occasion.

Our tradition-bound (and generally church-connected) instrument enjoys the presence of someone like Barbara Dennerlein who pumps fresh air into its being.  Barbara is applauded worldwide during her perpetual-motion concert tours, but though the jazz community may know her as a Hammond ‘B-3 Babe’ (my term), she’s proven that the pipe organ can play real jazz, too.  Barbara made a hit with appearances last summer at Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall and on San Diego’s Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park, and I expect that you’ll be seeing her name more often in exceptional, if unexpected, venues.

Though Dr. Paul Manz needs no introduction, I’m taking the opportunity to shine a little light upon him in his 90^th year, in thanks for the inestimable impact that he and his dear wife Ruth have had upon untold thousands of seekers after truth and beauty.  This also gives me the opportunity to give last year’s NYACOP prize-winner, Scott Montgomery, something to do before he hands over his crown.  I am humbled and delighted by Paul’s dedication of this piece to me, and further delighted that I can share the stage with Scott who, as a fearless teenager, may have been the first really young organist to be featured on a PIPEDREAMS when he submitted a tape to me, and I actually used it!

As for the days of youth, I began my career in broadcasting at WOBC-FM, the 10-watt station run by students at Oberlin College.  Though my degree was in Music History, after four years of Oberlin but before heading down that seemingly inevitable trail through graduate musicology, I sought a breather and hired on as a classical announcer at KSJR-FM, a new station begun at St. John’s Benedictine Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota.  KSJR was a shoestring operation, only 18 months old when I arrived as the new music director.  I was one of a paid staff of six, and had no intention of remaining long term.  But something about the place, or my work with it, clicked, and I’m still there.  KSJR is the starting-point of what grew into a regional network, known locally as Minnesota Public Radio and nationally, through the many programs we produce and distribute, as American Public Media.

Through all these years, my curiosity about music has never waned.  I distinctly remember the energy of the moment when I first listened to a compact disc of twelve Preludes and Fugues for piano (a later release included another twelve, thus covering all the major and minor keys), by a fellow named Henry Martin.  Martin teaches at Rutgers University’s Newark campus, and in these pieces he combined the contrapuntal model of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier with the modern harmonies and rhythms of jazz.  I was excited by the music’s intelligence, adventuresome spirit, and engaging personality, and wondered whether Henry had written any similar music for the organ.  Since he had not, but found the idea agreeable, I coaxed him onward.  I had also attempted to broker a meeting between Martin and Ken Cowan, but not until the first of these pieces had been composed did the penny drop, and now Ken, too, is an enthusiastic Martin maven.  The Preludes & Fugues which receive their premiere public performance today mark, I hope, the beginning of a zesty new cycle for all good-tempered organists.

Two years ago, Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra performed young California composer Kurt Erickson’s Toccata at a Composer Institute in Minneapolis, at which time Kurt revealed that his orchestral score actually began life as a piece for organ, but had never been performed in that mode.  So, this, too, is its premiere, and I expect you’ll find the work’s feverish good spirits enjoyable, quite balanced by the friendly propulsive energy of Aaron David Miller, who agreed to learn the piece for me. 

When I was a young thing in the first year of my Minnesota Experience, I met up with the gifted and wryly avuncular Gerald Bales while making my very first ‘remote organ recital recording’ at St. Mark’s Cathedral, where he was then director.  Given that I’ve invited Isabelle Demers, a talented young Canadian, to share the stage here, a score by this Canadian composer seemed appropriate.  As did some music by my local colleague and friend Stephen Paulus, with whom I first converged in the very early 1970s when, in the thrall of a crew of adventuresome students at Macalester College, I participated with him (and Monte Mason, and Jan Sajka, and Christopher Oldfather, and others whom I should not but have forgotten) in a complete, day-long performance of all 840 iterations of Eric Satie’s Vexations.  Stephen, obviously, has gone on to greater triumphs, as his stature as AGO Composer of the Year is but one proof.

Often times things don’t turn out the way they could, or should.  The 1992 AGO convention performance of Flights of Fancy by William Albright may not have fully followed the composer’s directions, and I had nearly forgotten about the piece until this past autumn in Ann Arbor, when Douglas Reed played the pants off the piece during a special celebration of the indefatigable Dr. Marilyn Mason (a model to us all for her unstoppable zeal…and longevity!).  With some luck, we might even figure out what an A.G.O. Fight Song could (or should) be!

So many other musicians and friends deserve to be part of this program.  I apologize for the inevitable limits imposed upon us tonight.  Should this event have been booked as an all-night affair (a la Calvin Hampton)?  The stacks of materials in my office…and at home…proclaim the obvious, there is more music than time, which is a good thing.  We can never have too many good organs, good organists, or good organ composers/compositions.  I’ll do my best, but with your collegial cooperation, I expect that my office piles will only grow!  Keep on Pipedreaming!!

~J. Michael Barone