Cathedral Organ Breaks Into Ragtime

The Cathedral and The Arts New Year’s Eve Gala Thursday, Dec. 31, St. John’s Cathedral

The Cathedral and The Arts series turned St. John’s Cathedral into a cabaret for the organization’s New Year’s Eve Gala Thursday night. A near-capacity audience heard a bit of ragtime on the cathedral organ, some waltzes and fox trots, a few flashy piano solos, and some songs and duets from Leonard Bernstein’s musicals.

The music warmed the cathedral’s stones and brightened its stained-glass windows.

Everyone knew this would be no ordinary evening when bagpiper William Thomas, in kilted finery, piped his way down the central aisle with the tune “Highland Cathedral.”

Organist Charles Bradley followed with something many an organist secretly longs to do: He played ragtime on the cathedral’s huge pipe organ. There was something bizarre, ominous even, about hearing William Albright’s bouncy little “Sweet Sixteenths Rag” on such an instrument in such a place.

This was just the beginning of a concert produced by pianist Kendall Feeney, noted for her unusual programming for the Zephyr music series.

For the Cathedral Gala, Feeney enlisted the services of six other fine musicians: In addition to Thomas, Bradley and herself, the program featured pianist Greg Presley, singers Ann Fennessy and Randal Wagner, and cellist Cheryl Carney. They all seemed to be having as much fun as the audience.

The party really began to glitter when Feeney and Presley played a polka and a waltz by Johann Strauss and brightened even more when they played three 1930s fox trots. It was almost as if Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had suddenly turned up at the party.

Earl Wild’s egregiously note-packed etudes based on Gershwin’s songs often strike me as cruising near the borders of bad taste. But Feeney’s performance of Wild’s version of “The Man I Love” for the left hand alone had to be heard to be believed.

The songs and duets from Leonard Bernstein musicals found the composer at his enjoyable best. Fennessy and Wagner showed that fine singers with excellent diction and a keen sense of style can make even a short song a winning piece of musical theater.

It was too bad that one of the pop guns set to fire confetti and streamers failed to go off at the concert’s end. That was the only misfire of the evening.