The pipe organ is at the heart of some of my earliest and most potent musical memories. Take my first visit to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC as a 6-year old treble, hearing the massive instrument there break the profound evening silence after a late rehearsal; or the anticipation I had for the postlude of the Easter service, hoping the organist would play the glorious finale to Widor’s Fifth Symphony (he always did). Some of my very first pieces as a young composer (all long lost by now) were for the organ, including one that made use of the wonderful discovery on an aging and obsolete organ I played at college: I could turn off the instrument while still holding down the keys and create a long sigh of weakening tones as the pipes exhaled and faded into silence. You can bet your boots I used that in a piece! (An earlier work, from 16-year old me, was a sort of head-banging rage of tonal clusters with all the stops of the organ pulled, prompting a family friend to lean over after the performance and whisper to my dad, “I’m not sure I always understand Jeff’s music.”) Even more than the piano or the voice (my primary performance focus), the organ was truly formative in my early years as a composer. And why not? No instrument has a greater range, breadth, and depth of sonic possibilities than the organ: what better instrument to explore one’s emerging musical language?