With 5 weeks to go, the FPCY choir began rehearsing the Sussex Carol this past Sunday. At least we're planning ahead!

Will be resigning from my post at FPCY at the end of December. See my resignation letter here, and a little essay here. I look forward to being able to explore how various churches do things - something that most church musicians don't have an opportunity to do!

Updated my links page and added a few people that are dear to me: Kenneth Inkster, Naki Sung Kripfgans, Thomas Murray (who I have never met in person, but whose playing I absolutely love), and David Palmer.

Published my first research article a couple weeks ago. The manuscript was submitted to Applied Physics Letters, and am awaiting acceptance.

Excited for new term. Will not be taking any courses for the first time. Will be a teaching assistant for the first time. May publish paper for the first time.

Excited for new choir season. Will be directing. Lots of liturgical renewal. Using a Plainsong Psalter. Great music. Especially proud of compiling the Chorister's Handbook and addendum, which outlines the choir's music from this coming September to next June 2010.

I'm done!

I am back in Michigan now, after a week of organ festivities and music-making in my hometown of Toronto, Canada. The Royal Canadian College of Organists celebrated 100 years of existence during its semi-annual national convention, and every day we got to enjoy at least two spectacular organ concerts. Highlights for me included:
     - being able to attend 3 very sublime services at St. Thomas's and St. Mary's Anglican Churches, and witnessing the near-perfect interplay between music and liturgy. This was my first time to visit St. Mary's, and it was thrilling to worship in the church that, with Willan's guidance, helped steer the direction of Anglican church music in Canada in a higher direction.
     - seeing good friends and musical heroes/mentors again
     - Pierre Villette's Hymne a la Vierge, sung by Exultate Chamber Singers
     - the results of the organ competition
     - hearing my first live organ concerto (2 of them, actually), especially Jongen's Symphonie Concertante
     - hearing Ken Cowan live on the final night of the convention. His memorized and mesmerizing performance of Reger's transcription of the Bach Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue was jaw-dropping.

This coming week, I will be attending the University of Michigan's Choral Conducting Symposium, in an attempt to learn some proper choir directing skills. They might come in handy soon...

I've chosen the music for my annual Christmas eve recital. Yay! See here.

Just procrastinating on studying for my last exam, which is in three hours (and immediately preceded by my organ jury). I've updated the rep list after probably 6 months. It currently reflects the stuff I'll be learning for the 2009 RCCO National Competition being held in Toronto on June 27 / July 2 (I was accepted as a semi-finalist recently!).

The Ypsilanti Pipe Organ Festival's first season concluded yesterday with a concert by Marilyn Mason and George Shirley. Onto the next season!

In research news: after more than half a year of tinkering, I have finally gotten a reasonably stable contact of a gold-coated AFM tip and a gold substrate covered with a monolayer of alkanethiols. We tried doing an I-V characterization of the system and got that signature sigmoidal curve that pervades the literature. The almost-unbearably long time that it took to get this stable contact (which is only just the beginning of the work we're trying to do) made this milestone not so thrilling to witness. Kind of like a Pyrrhic victory.

Back to studying...

Back from and done with a string of performances. It was fun to travel to New York, Connecticut and Texas, all in 5 weeks! In mid-March, I travelled to Syracuse and played a recital at Hendricks chapel. This is the first Holtkamp organ I have encountered. I quite enjoyed the rich plenum he seems to be known for. Kola Olowabi, the university organist, was very nice, and, being both Torontonians, we had a good chat while I was there. I also got to stay at the university's Sheraton hotel, which was quite pleasant, to say the least.

In early April, I had the priviledge of auditioning for a scholarship for church music studies in Connecticut, sponsored by Jim Bagnall, a member of First Congregational Church of Simsbury (I believe!), in memory of his late wife, Charlotte Hoyt Bagnall. It was a surprising coincidence that Mr. Bagnall did his studies at the University of Michigan, in engineering. He was very gracious to let me board in his lovely home the night before my audition. I enjoyed preparing for the audition very much, as this scholarship fit in perfectly with my primary musical aspirations the most - of becoming an capable church musician. The judges chose great pieces, too, for us to learn: Walton's 'Jubilate Deo' and the hymn tune 'Laudate Dominum'.

My trip to Texas for an organ competition greeted me with two delayed flights due to the aftermath of a hailstorm. But soon afterwards, my distress was offset by my discovery of a strong English sacred tradition at the competition's sponsoring church, and the general amicability of everyone there. I was truly impressed with this church, which could seat over 1,500 people in a town of only two hundred thousand, and still fill up regularly on Sundays to two-thirds full. Noah and Keenan, my fellow players in the competition, were both great to be around. I thought they played superbly (well, as much as I could hear through the walls in the green room!)

The day after playing in Texas, I had to rush back home to Ann Arbor to play a concert honoring Marilyn Mason's lifetime career. This was sponsored by the National AGO, and bigshots from across the country were in attendance. It was quite scary, and quite an honor to play.

I promise I will update those crossed-out service pieces on the right as soon as I can...

Finally, here goes another long-overdue update.

It turned out that the new organ would not really be done until this coming weekend (the 18th). I did play a Christmas Eve recital and service using the organ, but it was dreadfully out of tune, and had no mixtures. Also, to add to the excitement, there was an electrical problem when I went to practice on Christmas Eve afternoon, which was causing the console to not communicate with the pipes (i.e. no sound). But thankfully, things will settle down now, now that Mr. Ott has come back yet again to do the final final touches. John Weaver comes to church next weekend. I'm sure it will be interesting.

And so this unfinished post will finally be completed in late February, after Dr. Weaver's wonderful concerts and workshops, and after my own recital on the new Ott organ. The relentless stream of work still comes. At my lab, we are close to getting good data for the experiments I've been working on all year long. I have to submit applications for a couple organ contests tomorrow (Saturday, Feb. 28), because they are somehow due on Sunday the 1st. I hope the post office is open.

My concert in February was quite a rushed job. I had to attempt to memorize the core of the program (about 50 minutes of music) in 3 weeks. Some parts, suffice to say, turned out better than others... but thankfully, I got through it all, and will get a "second chance" to play all the pieces more properly in Detroit in two weeks or so. But - here is the important - I do not know how much longer I can keep up the daily routine of going into the lab at 7:30am, leaving at 7:30pm, then having a quick dinner, and practicing until midnight. I felt particularly worn out after the February 22 concert, and was glad to just drop almost everything practice-related for 3 days (now I have to rev up the engines again for Detroit). Simply put, I am considering not playing any more recitals next year. At least, not ones that involve me learning entire new sets of music.

I apologize for the lack of updates. Things have been busy, especially with research, practicing, designing another website, and publicizing organ events in general.

The new organ at my church, First Presbyterian of Ypsilanti, has been sitting behind the pipe facade for quite a few weeks new. Voicing is scheduled to be complete by the end of November, in time for Advent 1. New church year, new organ! Good times.

Word is starting to get out about the concerts that are going to be played on the new 3-manual instrument in 2009 as part of the Ypsilanti Pipe Organ Festival. You can check out details here.

My Christmas eve recital at the church will be at 9pm. I have my rep selected now (finally)! Want more info? Click here.

I'm sad to say that the current organ at FPCY is no longer working, and will not be fixed. However, it will be totally disassembled by the first week of September anyway, because the new organ will need the space!

But for now, I won't be able to play through those 6 trio sonatas on the right, as I had originally intended. In their place, I'll just be improvising preludes and postludes on the piano (it feels quite different than organ improvisation - try them both sometime!).

A calendar was added to the main page, and the navigation bar buttons were improved. You can now listen to audio samples of Aaron's playing at the Media tab. His repertoire list is also included there.

Aaron's site was made public this morning. He has added a few more interesting features since last week (mainly Javascripts, which took him forever to figure out the syntax, since this was his first time to write in that language).

Keep checking back on the Repertoire section. There are sample tracks of Aaron's playing that are available there, and a lot more will be coming shortly (he just has to find where he saved these files...) As always, Aaron would love to hear your comments about his site, music, or life - contact him here to do so. He is a fairly fast replier.

Welcome to the home page of Aaron Tan, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The first draft of Aaron's first personal website was completed today. Combing through the CSS style sheet to find bugs took much longer than expected, but thankfully, all the errors were (eventually) resolved, as one can see.

Take a couple minutes to browse around. Listen to some sample tracks in the Repertoire section. Let Aaron know by contacting him if you find anything of interest or intrigue. He is usually expedient in his replies.