Ein Klein Musickding mit Variationen

I'll be the first to admit that we musicians frequently have strange and wonderful friendships. Well, at least they're guaranteed to be strange, and some people probably prefer that we spell it "f-i-e-n-d-ships"...

Barb Elving and I share one of these types of interpersonal connections. We met, I think, at the first conference I attended and have remained friends ever since. Being friends, of course, occasionally means being co-conspirators, and the 1988 conference was no exception.

It turned out that the Kimo Smith was the organ clinician that year. Kimo is a very gifted musician - he understands far more Poulenc than I ever will... Among other things, Kimo gave a very special organ concert that week, and provided us experiences you could only imagine in your wildest dreams!

With the compositional influence of Johnny Carl (he of the big hands, German sixths, and D-flat major - you had to be there...), plus the effect of four days of "music boot camp" and the resultant joyous fatigue, Barb and I found ourselves sitting on the bench across from the bookstore on Thursday at 10:30 p.m.

Okay, we were fairly worn down from all the workshops and rehearsals and meals and running all over the Mount Hermon grounds, but we weren't tired enough to engage in a bit of lateral thinking. And so the conversation eventually turned to, "Kimo's a pretty good organist; I wonder what we could give him to play in a special solo." On reflection, I guess the actual words were, "... I wonder what we could do to him in a special solo." And as we started coming up with ideas, we started laughing. And as we laughed, people walked by us and gave us funny looks (what else is new?).

So the next step was to put all of this in a reasonably coherent, if not playable, form. And so you have the score before you... okay, at least you will once you download it. Enjoy!