Dr. John Longhurst thinks "it's a whole lot more fun to hear other people play your music than to play it yourself."
The recently retired Salt Lake Tabernacle organist made the comment at the end of a March 1 program in the Conference Center in which an array of accomplished organists performed his compositions and arrangements. It comprised "A Tribute to John Longhurst" put on by the Salt Lake Chapter of the American Guild of Organists."
Members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, conducted by associate director Mack Wilberg, performed "We're Not Ashamed to Own Our Lord" among other selections, and a congregational hymn was "I Believe in Christ." Brother Longhurst composed the music for both selections, which are included in the current Church hymnbook.
Organists featured on the program came from an array of other Christian congregations in the Salt Lake City area, including the Catholic Cathedral of the Madeleine, the Wasatch Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection in Centerville, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, and the First Presbyterian Church.
Andrea Slack, organist and choir director of the Memorial Park Ward in Houston, Texas, performed on the program and also gave a spoken tribute. She was a student of Brother Longhurst at BYU in the days before he began his career as Tabernacle organist.
She recounted that when she first played for him, he remarked, "Well, I don't see a lot of musical maturity there." She was angry at him for a while, but eventually realized she should be angry at herself for being stubborn.
"And things changed completely from that point on," she remarked. "He became my greatest advocate."
He encouraged her love for performing, she said, "because he knew that the more I was going to perform, the harder I would practice, the more I would work and the more I would learn. But that came with a caveat for him as well. It meant a lot of extra lessons, lessons for which I was completely unable to compensate him as a student. And he never asked."
Gregory Glenn, director of music at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, said Brother Longhurst recently served on the search committee that selected the cathedral's new organist.
"John was not only a knowledgable and clearly experienced interviewer, his insights and wisdom were an inspiration to everybody who served on the cathedral's committee," he said. "In fact at each of the final interviews, I waited with bated breath for something John managed to do at each one of the sessions. Somehow, through his research and perhaps communication with other professionals around the country, he managed to discover some hidden and often humorous secret about each of the candidates. By the final interview, everyone waited anxiously for what John would find that would render the candidate speechless."
Also performing were Tabernacle organists Clay Christiansen, Richard Elliott, Andrew Unsworth, Linda Margetts and Bonnie Goodliffe. Bother Christiansen and Brother Elliott spoke. Brother Unsworth, the newest Tabernacle organist, played a major role in organizing the program.
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