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NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DARY KANSON
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13. 2006
ORGAN (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Anna Faltermeier/KANSAN
Mark Harries, a senior organ and church music major, wants to be a church music director someday. The job would likely entail organizing music for church services, conducting ensembles, playing at weddings and funerals, and in most traditional churches, playing the organ. Harries is one of four organ and church music undergraduates at the University of Kansas.
The scene at a typical band practice is decidedly less sophisticated than the wood-panled recital hall
Cracked, yellow-painted walls and a cement floor scattered with beer caps dominate Kritikos' basement, contrasting the stained glass windows, high ceiling and rows of seats in the recital hall.
But looks can be deceiving.
Sitting behind his blue glittered drum set, sipping on a Beck's Oktoberfest beer, Harries looked less like a church organist and more like a Lawrence hipster.
Davidson shot him an "as if" look. "What the hell does that mean?" she asked.
"Play that in the sixth scale degree," he matter-of-factly told Jenny Davidson, the band's bass player.
Despite some confusion, Harries'
bandmates tend to be understanding of his formal musical knowledge.
"The pipe organ is the hardest musical instrument on earth to play; You're playing
Bach, you have two different manuals, you're playing with your feet, and you're pulling out stops," Kritikos said. "Rock drumming is quite possibly the easiest."
Kritikos said the band was glad to have Harries because his organ skills, including his sense of rhythm and general musical knowledge, made him a more musical drummer.
Harries even played accordion for one of the songs.
"He just played the keyboard part, but it got people's attention," Kritikos said.
Harries said the drums and organ were completely different, but complemented one another.
Michael Bauer, professor of organ and church music, agreed that the two instruments correlate.
"It's probably the most impor
tant thing for an organist to have a really good sense of rhythm," Bauer said. "I would think that percussion would help develop that."
Besides drums and organ, Harries
He and his girlfriend, Anne Kretsinger, share a passion for music. They are in a concert choir together and have been dating for two years.
is interested in conducting choirs, something he'll likely do as a church music director.
Harries liked that his chosen career path involved going to church every Sunday. He said religion plays a big part in what he does.
"He's majoring in something that he really loves," she said. "It's a hobby,
but it's also kind of his career too."
"Ultimately I'm doing it because I feel I've been given a gift and someday I'm going to have to answer to that," Harries said. "First and foremost you're playing for God. He's your audience and you're using your talents to serve. The secondary purpose is to lead the congregation."
Church music is in Harries' genes. His father, Tom Harries, was a church organist for years and is now a Lutheran pastor.
The elder Harries said music always came naturally to Mark.
"We have a photo of him when he was little in pjs on his tiptoes to reach the piano keys," he said.
The younger Harries wrote his first composition titled "The February Second Castle Song," in second grade. Feb. 2 is his birthday.
Harries hopes to write compositions of his own in church music.
Bauer, his professor, said full-time jobs in organ and church music were in high demand. He has had eleven different church music jobs himself.
Harries, who will play his senior organ recital at 7:30 tonight at Bales Organ Recital Hall, said he arranged to have colored lights swirl the room as he plays a piece he says is "closely related to techno."
Harries rarely settles for the ordinary. He said his dream job was to be a composer, something that was difficult in the general music world, but feasible in church music.
"Within the church music world they're not looking for super hard music, they're looking for music that average church players can do and I like the challenge of putting that limitation on it by writing something really good," he said.
Harrises is contemplating graduate school to earn a master's degree in church music. He will graduate in May with an undergraduate degree in church and organ music.
Kansan staff writer Anna Faltermeier can be contacted at afaltermeier@kansan.com.
— Edited by Catherine Odson
NATION
Memorial dedicated five years after crash
Seth Wenig/Associated Press
Nannette Forteza rests her hand on the name of her husband during the dedication of the Flight 587 memorial on the fifth anniversary of the crash in New York Sunday. The memorial remembers those who died on Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed, killing more than 260 people.
BY JENNIFER PELTZ ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Hundreds of relatives and friends of the victims in the nation's second deadliest air accident dedicated a much-awaited memorial Sunday with mementoes and mixed emotions.
Wearing their loss on T-shirts, scarves and buttons, families clutching red roses and photographs gathered on a foggy beachfront to look up the names of 265 loved ones killed when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed five years ago.
"It's something that we can come to and pray," said Ana Lora, who placed a model car near the name of her brother, Jose Francisco Lora, who collected cars. "This is something that, really, we need."
the memorial marks years of effort to create a tangible remembrance of the crash, which killed all 260 people on board and another five in the quiet Queens neighborhood where the jet fell. The National Transportation Safety Board eventually determined that the tail of the Airbus A300 had fallen off, and the agency blamed
pilot error, inadequate pilot training and overly sensitive rudder controls.
The disaster jarred a city still raw and fearful after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center two months before. The loss was also felt heavily in the Dominican Republic, where Flight 587 was bound from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Many passengers were of Dominican heritage.
Designed by a Dominican artist, the $9.2 million memorial is a curved wall inscribed with the names of the dead. Cutouts, where weeping relatives placed roses, wreaths and photographs, provide a view of the sea.
"Your ideas and your memories have been woven into it," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told those gathered Sunday.
But the memorial also was shaped by tensions about its location -- a seaside park rather than the residential street where the plane crashed -- and some victims' relatives were still coming to terms with the outcome Sunday. After the city-sponsored ceremony, mourners flocked to an impromptu memorial around a tree at the crash site.
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For many, too, just remembering raised conflicting feelings.
"I feel good being here, but it's very painful," said Lora. Her 43-year-old brother was on the verge of graduating from law school in the Dominican Republic when he boarded Flight 587.
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