SS. Peter and Paul Parish Presents!
The First Friday Organ Concert Series
Thirty Minute Organ Recitals
Following First Friday Mass,
featuring Talented Local Organists,
celebrating the King of Instruments!
Friday, September 6, 2019
8:00 p.m.
David Hufford, Organist
David has served as Organist/Director of Music at Angelica Lutheran Church, Allen Park, MI, since March, 1996, having previously served two Toledo-area churches over the course of 11 years, beginning at age 16. He is also Co-Owner of the Renaissance Pipe Organ Company, a firm responsible for the care and maintenance of several of the area’s most prominent pipe organs. David has served as adjudicator for the National Organ Competition (preliminary round) hosted by the First Presbyterian Church of Fort Wayne, an AGO Young Artists’ Competition also in Fort Wayne, and for the National Association of Negro Musicians, held in Detroit.
Among the most musically-influential factors David recalls from his early years, he counts his father’s cassette copy of Virgil Fox’s “Heavy Organ” program, as well as his mother’s LP of the final recording made at the former Toledo Paramount Theater on the 4/20 Wurlitzer pipe organ. Reading of the demolition of the Toledo Paramount in 1965 made a profound impression on him, as did his aunt’s account that “Many people had tears in their eyes” upon the loss of the breathtaking, atmospheric-style Paramount. These events instilled in him a strong sense of historical value of these places and their pipe organs, just as we still, luckily, have to treasure in Ann Arbor. (The Toledo Wurlitzer now serves as the nucleus of an expanded pipe organ in Berkeley, CA.)
He played several theater organ concerts in his early 20s, had some brief-but-valuable coaching with the late Denny Hinman of Toledo, and developed a keen fondness for the stylings of Buddy Cole.
In late 2014, David rekindled his interest in playing theater pipe organs and joined the staff of organists at the Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, where the original 1927 Barton 3/13 pipe organ is played live at least ten times weekly. Renaissance Pipe Organ Company recently completed the first of two planned phases of restoration work on this important instrument.