This is A Love Story

It was 2005. I had just moved to Los Angeles from Cleveland, Ohio, where I had been studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music. I was now about to embark on the long (and winding) road to getting my DMA from the University of Southern California.

That’s when a classmate asked if I wanted to go to a organ recital by Paul Jacobs, and that’s when I fell in love. It was my first visit to the Neighborhood Church, and I immediately fell in love with our magnificent pipe organ, a Glatter-Götz Op. IV (1999). Then and there, I started to dream of someday being the organist at the Neighborhood Church, and 14 years later, my dream came true.

Glatter-Götz is a world-renowned organ builder in Germany. Their pipe organs can be found in some of the most prestigious churches and concert halls around the world, including Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre in Russia, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and of course ... the Neighborhood Church in Palos Verdes Estates.

Our pipe organ is a tracker-action organ, which is rare and special. What is tracker action? It means that all the connections in the organ are mechanical rather than electrical. The keyboards and the pedal board are directly linked to the trackers that connect to the wind chests which play the notes, in contrast to an electro-pneumatic instrument where there are electrical relays between the keyboard and the pipes. (Like a manual typewriter in contrast to a computer keyboard.) This in turn results in more responsiveness and sensitivity. As an organist, I am able to better control the sound the organ makes, a greater variety of articulation in musicspeak. In short, when I play, I feel as if our pipe organ is alive and breathing, and another member of ourNeighborhood Church family.

Recently, I was invited to perform at a recital sponsored by St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco. For the recital, I recorded a number of pieces on our magnificent pipe organ which can now be viewed on YouTube and which I hope you enjoy.

Blessing on you all.

Dr. Hyunju Hwang
Organist

This article appeared in the Wave on June 23, 2021