Adam and I moved to Hillsdale, Michigan about a month ago. Adam is the new chaplain at Hillsdale College, as well as the rector of the Anglican church nearby, Holy Trinity Parish. I will be serving as adjunct piano instructor and staff accompanist at Hillsdale College. We've moved into an apartment near the college (twice the space and half the price of our old apartment in Wayne!) and are working on getting Adam's new office set up. This week, we had the chance to spend some quality time with about 25 of the student body leaders at a leadership course/retreat at a beautiful lodge in northern Michigan. Last night we met many of the faculty and staff at the Fall Opening Pre-conference and dinner. We've also started to get to know our new church, bit by bit. We have been tremendously blessed by the warm welcome we've received both at the college and the church.

It's been WAY too long since I've given you all an update on my life and ministry. In the last year, since my colleague Dmitry's passing, I have given much more of my attention to becoming a better organist and improving the music ministry at my church, Christ Church Anglican in Wayne, PA. Can I just say, I really love my church, and I'm so happy that I have the privilege of serving there as music minister!

Playing preludes and postludes that the congregation actually sits and listens to is great motivation to actually practice during the week. To that end, I created a spreadsheet of the pieces I would like to learn, arranged in order of difficulty, over the next several months. Hopefully, if I deliver on my good intentions, completing that list will enable me to pass the American Guild of Organists' certification testing. I'm shooting for the Colleague level test (equivalent to a BM in organ) for November and the Associate level test (like an MM) for April. In the last several months, I've subbed for a half dozen churches and even applied for a couple of Sunday morning organist jobs. I think I will have an update on that process in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks to a couple of key people joining our church, I created the Chamber Singers of Christ Church Anglican. The CCA Chamber singers are a select, volunteer group of seven highly trained singers who will perform repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the 20th century during our Sunday services. They had their first performance at an evensong service last night.  Click here to find recorded excerpts of that.


This summer, I was also able to obtain twenty vestments for our choir free of charge from the dear folks at Operation Pass Along, a ministry that receives donated items from churches that are shutting down and passes them along for just the cost of shipping to new church plants like us. What a wonderful ministry! Now our newly-formed Chamber Singers can both sound AND look good.


This fall, I will also be receiving training to become a Discovery Bible Study leader. The Discovery Bible Study is an approach to the Word that is very obedience-centric. The hope is that by next spring, our church will launch at least three small groups-- one in West Chester, one in Wayne, and one in Philadelphia, using this approach. Jesus said to go out and make DISCIPLES (not just Christians) and that's what we intend to try to do!


Last spring, I also created an online network for clergy wives in our diocese, primarily geared toward sharing prayer requests and staying in touch between Synod and the clergy retreat. The trouble with our diocese (CANA East) being so geographically spread out (from Maine to Florida to the Mississippi river) is that it's hard to build authentic relationships during the year. I'm hoping that this online forum will help to mitigate that sense of isolation.


The last major accomplishment from last year was that our church hosted our diocesan Synod. That's right, we had about 200 people descend on the building for about three days. While the diocese does most of the planning of the actual liturgies and flow of events, most of the logistics (room setup, food, parking, hosting people, etc.) is left up to us. I also coordinated a choir for an evensong and for the ordination service, in addition to getting a brass ensemble together for the final service. This year we also managed to get about 75% of our church involved in helping somehow-- on the kitchen crew, childcare, welcoming people, setup, etc. While it was a significant investment of energy from everyone, the consensus was that it was a glorious weekend, the best Synod our diocese had ever had, and a marvelous opportunity for our church to see the national and global implications of the movement we are a part of.

Today marks the one-month anniversary of the passing of my dear colleague and friend, the cellist Dmitry Volkov. He slipped away from us in his sleep for no apparent reason; the medical examiner said the cause of death was a heart condition. At the young age of just 26, and with our trip to an international chamber music competition just two days away, the whole thing was incredibly devastating and heart-rending. More than anything, I just miss my friend.

I was asked to give remarks at his memorial service at Peabody, so I'd like to share with you all here what I said there...

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I remember very vividly the first time I met Dmitry. I had heard the buzz about his incredible playing that went around when he first arrived on campus, so when I received a call from him about needing an accompanist for something, I immediately started practicing. I found a YouTube video of him playing the piece, and over the course of the next couple of days, I practiced along with that video to the point that I could predict his timing down to the nanosecond. So, when he came in for our first rehearsal, he was surprised that he didn’t need to explain anything to me. But even after listening to his playing on repeat for days, I was not prepared for the artistic power, the clarity of intention, the incredible expressivity of his playing. I walked away from that rehearsal on cloud nine. I had never met a musician before him with whom playing felt so natural, for whom no words were necessary, because his intent was so clear through the sound itself. When Dima played, the cello and the piano disappeared and it was as if we were simply immersed together in music. That was a totally unique experience that I’ll never forget.

Never did I dream at that time that I would have the privilege of repeating that experience over and over, for the next three and a half years. When Nikita joined us, the connection was again instant. I felt like first rehearsals were at a higher level than most final performances I had been in with other groups.  And in actual performances, nothing could shake Dima. I’ve never met anyone who could perform so solidly, no matter how awful the circumstances were. I’ve also never met someone that was so spontaneous with his playing. I remember on our second or third performance together, he was playing Paganini’s Variations on One String. He told me to learn the accompaniment part in all keys because at the very last second he might decide to tune his “one string” to a different note so that we could play it in a different key. Fortunately for me, he stuck with the original key of D minor for that performance. But he was always searching for a new way to interpret something, a new way to make a piece come alive and connect with the audience. I’ve met a lot of great musicians over the years, but Dima was unique. He wasn’t just an excellent cellist. He is irreplaceable.

His spontaneity translated into life, too. Dima was always someone who lived for the experience of the moment. Anyone who knew him at all knew his fun-loving personality, his charm, his charisma, his immediate ability to connect to anyone and everyone. Being around Dima certainly always brightened my world. He had a boyish way about him that refused to take anything or anyone, including himself, too seriously. He was always generous, too… whenever we ate together, he would always let me steal at least half of his fries or one of his cookies. I remember he used to collect candy bars through the Peabody caf with his extra meal points, and at the end of the semester one time he gave me two big bags full of them!

When Nikita called me on Saturday to tell me the news, I was stricken. How could this be! I had just spoken to him the day before! We were supposed to be getting on a plane to Japan in just a couple days for a competition! How could he be gone so suddenly, with so little warning?

Death is so wrong. It’s so contrary to the way the world should be. It flies in the face of all our hopes and dreams and plans and our efforts to make the world beautiful. Different people deal with this in different ways—some people intentionally just live for the moment, some people try to make a big enough splash that the waves will last beyond their lifetime, some people ignore the question altogether. As for me, I’d like to conclude my remembrances of Dima with a prayer from my faith tradition:

Remember your Creator
    in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
    and the years approach when you will say,
    “I find no pleasure in them”--
before the sun and the light
    and the moon and the stars grow dark,
    and the clouds return after the rain;
when the keepers of the house tremble,
    and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
    and those looking through the windows grow dim;
when the doors to the street are closed
    and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
    but all their songs grow faint;
when people are afraid of heights
    and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
    and the grasshopper drags itself along
    and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
    and mourners go about the streets.

Remember your Creator—before the silver cord is severed,
    and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
    and the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
    and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:1-7)

Yesterday I gave my lecture recital, and a few days ago I turned in my thesis, so I am finally DONE with my DMA! This is the first time in twenty years that I have not had some kind of schooling lying ahead. I'm relishing the feeling...

After almost a year of studying, I've finally finished all of my comprehensive exams and can move on to the final portion of my degree, candidacy, which includes the Final Oral Exam, the thesis, and the lecture-recital. Assuming I don't fail anything, this means that I will graduate in May. Yeyy!!! I am so excited to be nearing the end of this process.

I would have put this in the last post, but not everybody had been told in person yet. Now that they have, here 'tis...

Adam and I are moving to Philadelphia!

Christ Church on the Main Line in Wayne, PA (about 30 minutes northwest of Philadelphia) has called Adam to be their rector (pastor). Our official start date will be November 1. The position is bi-vocational, so Adam will continue his work at Gordon-Conwell via telecommute. His job is designing online courses, so his work is totally online anyway. Adam just got ordained to the priesthood on August 25, with the express purpose of having this church in Wayne be his first pastoral cure.

We're really going to miss our dearly loved friends here on the North Shore. Adam has lived here for seven years, so he has put down some pretty deep roots. While I've only been here full time since January, I still have made some pretty close friends. I'm sure we'll make new friends down there, but saying goodbye is sure never fun....

This weekend Adam and I are going to a clergy retreat down in Maryland, and on the way we're going to look at some apartments in PA. I think once we nail down housing this whole thing might start to feel more real. It certainly hasn't sunk in yet! 

Hi all!

I know it's been a long time since I've updated, so here's the news... I've been buried in books since May. This summer I took (and passed!) two comprehensive exams for my DMA (on music theory and music history), and right now I'm working on a third. This one will be the hardest yet-- it's on piano literature, and the bottom line is, I need to be able to identify the composer, title, opus number, and possibly the editor of 350 pieces, based on a page taken from any part of the score (that's right, it could be from the middle or the end). I also need to be able to list the information on an additional 350 pieces. I have 14 weeks. Can I do it????

Meanwhile, I'm also starting work on my thesis. For the DMA, you only have to write for about 50-60 pages, so it's not a full dissertation by any stretch of the imagination, but still, it'll be the longest paper I've ever written. The topic is going to be the differences between Soviet and Western biographical sources on Rachmaninoff's departure to America and the impact of that on the last half of his life. I've been going down to Harvard every Friday for the last month to scan in thousands of pages of Russian source materials on Rachmaninoff. Not being able to use my own school's interlibrary loan system because of being here in Boston has been a big pain, but having a good reason to visit Harvard almost makes up for it!

On the much more pedestrian side of life, I am learning to make bread! I've made four batches already, as well as a pumpkin pie. One of my goals for this coming year is to get "comfortably proficient" (as my Rule of Life states) at baking. Part of the reason for this is that I really miss Russian bread; I haven't found any American store-bought varieties that come close. Plus, there's just nothing that tastes better than freshly baked bread right out of the oven. Am I right or am I right!

For the last couple of weeks, I have been working on a timeline of what feels like everything that ever happened, but really it is just every piano piece ever written.  It puts piano composers starting from Scarlatti all the way to the present in chronological order, and within each composer's entry I've embedded youtube videos and imslp scores of all of their most important works, along with a complete listing of all of their piano works.  I've also included a link to each composer's wiki article.  

If anyone is interested in accessing this online, please respond through the "contact me" section and I can sell you the password for $15.  It's meant to be a study tool for fellow pianists, especially those studying for Piano Literature exams like me!