| Celebrity
Recitalist Ann Elise Smoot Modified 29/09/2007 |
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Passionate about bringing organ music to a wider audience and injecting new ideas into the organ world at large, Ann Elise Smoot has been involved in founding several initiatives. These include co-founding the London Organ Summer Course for university age students, which has attracted students from all over the UK, Ireland, and the USA. She is co-founder of the successful London Organ Forum (now in it’s fourth year), a study day which aims to encourage organists to look at their repertoire in a wider musical context. Ann Elise Smoot is also one of the most sought-after organ teachers in Great Britain, and is in frequent demand for master classes throughout the UK and North America. She is director of the St. Giles Junior Organ Conservatoire, a unique and highly successful programme for teenage organists. She has also taught and performed three times in recent years at the Oundle International Festival and associated summer school for young organists, and has been a frequent and popular tutor on several Royal School of Church Music courses. June 2007 |
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Saturday,
23rd June 2007 3 pm: |
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ORGAN MASTER
CLASS AND ORGAN RECITAL Saturday 23rd June 2007 Presented by the Organists’ Associations of Newbury & District, Windsor & District, and Berkshire For four local organists, the recent Master Class given by internationally renowned organist Ann Elise Smoot presented a rare opportunity to evaluate their individual skills and playing techniques. The master class also gave the audience a chance to see and hear a truly dedicated teacher at work and to admire the talents of four people for whom organ playing is such an important part of their lives. Like me, some in the audience may have had relatively little technical organ knowledge, but this was no bar to perceiving many of the points which Ann Elise Smoot was conveying to her four soloists. All had chosen what they wanted to perform, and this made for an interesting programme during the afternoon’s proceedings. James Woodhouse, who plays at various churches in parishes to the south-west of Newbury, played the third (allegro marziale) of Frank Bridges 3 Organ Pieces. Steve Bowey, currently Organist at St Mary’s Church, Shaw-cum-Donnington, chose to play the Chorale Prelude on Dundee by Parry. Alistair Davis, who has been Organist at St Mary’s Church, Stockcross since 1987, played the Prelude from the Prelude and Fudge in E minor, BWV548 by J S Bach. All three organists are recitalists who perform in the Newbury & District Organists’ Association’s monthly lunchtime organ recital series at St Nicolas Church. The fourth soloist, Billy Kilpatrick, first played the organ nearly 30 years ago, his first job being with the Newbury organ builders, Foster-Waite. Billy is currently well-known as the Organist at the United Reformed Church in Newbury. His chosen performance piece was Buxtehude’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor. Although Ann Elise chose not to use a microphone for her comments to each of the organists, she ensured that the audience could hear some of the more general comments. This was, after all, meant to be a positive experience for the four organists, and guidance rather than overt criticism was the order of the day. As such, there was some good-natured verbal interplay between the players and Ann Elise, with some anecdotes and humour shared with the listeners. Ann Elise is a very animated young organist, with seemingly endless enthusiasm and energy, and broke off to make notes on the soloists’ scores, or to demonstrate on the keyboard a particular technique, which not only helped the players but kept the audience fascinated. She “sang along” to illustrate some of her points, made the players smile from time to time, and seemed to keep the atmosphere relaxed and happy whilst providing stimulating and thought-provoking comments. As a non-organist, I was particularly interested in some of the technique tips which Ann Elise gave – such as minimising the effort needed for “non-essential tasks”, advising against, for instance, using shoulders, elbows or other parts of the body for time-keeping. Playing the various manuals as well as the pedals of the organ must be a demanding activity, for which Ann Elise wanted her students to expend only the required amount of energy. And so tips were given on things like the optimal positioning of the feet when using the pedals, and the effective use of the registration aids for complex tonal changes available on such a relatively large instrument, without reducing control of the note-playing. I have no doubt that for those in the audience who were organists, many of the comments relating to the music itself were extremely relevant. From my point-of-view, I found interest in such matters as the historical context of a composition. An excellent and amusing example of this was when Ann Elise described how, during Buxtehude’s composing days, it was a regular thing on a Sunday for there to be two three-hour services to be attended, so that for a congregation the playing of a contrasting lively organ piece could “bring them out of their stupor!” It seemed that the master class experience was enjoyable and valuable for the performers, and in many ways delightful for the audience (our Mayor, Adrian Edwards, confessed to me before the start of the class that he was “absolutely fascinated” by the idea of the event). After two hours of concerted instruction and demonstration, less than an hour later Ann Elise found the energy and renewed enthusiasm to give a varied recital in the evening, which included music from several centuries and further demonstrated her dexterity and, in some instances, her sense of fun. This event held jointly by three Organists’ Associations at Newbury was a wonderful opportunity for us to learn something of the passion with which Ann Elise Smoot tries to bring organ music to a wider audience and to inject new ideas into the organ world at large. As director of the St Giles Junior Organ Conservatoire in London, co-founder of the London Organ Summer Course for university age students from the UK, Ireland the USA, and co-founder of the successful London Organ Forum, she is brimming with enthusiasm, and has declared herself very happy with the day she spent in Newbury. Regrettably, there were several competing events in and around Newbury on 23rd June, but the rather sparse audiences for the organ day left Ann Elise and the organisers in no doubt that this had been a successful event. Carolyn Greenwood |
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Ann
Elise Smoot’s international career was launched by her successes
in two major competitions: first prize in the American Guild of
Organists National young Artists competition in 1998 and third prize
in St. Albans 1997. She now performs regularly though out the UK,
United States and Europe, with a repertoire that ranges from the
14th century to the present day. After completing two honours
degrees at Yale, where she won several major prizes for scholarship
and for organ playing, she travelled to England, where she studied
organ and harpsichord at the Royal Academy of Music, and, latterly,
with Dame Gillian Weir.