this week on question do we have a special treat for you we're going to go back in time to go auster massachusetts to the hammond cast to a time when mark anderson was the resident artist at the hammond castle on the largest residential pipe organ in the world we will hear started learning to play bach when i was just barely three years old by the time i was six she had me in state piano teacher competitions playing bach two part inventions from there i went to the regular course of school grammar school in high school studying music all the way and i want to scholarship to study with marcel to pray at the paris conservatory and actually the way i originally met marcel to pray was by the great graces of john here's h us a little bit about that meeting interesting meeting i had played a concert in durham north carolina when i was just barely fourteen years old on the duke chapel organ and as it happens on his hammond was at that program and heard me met me afterwards and invited me to come to gloucester massachusetts which was of a place at that time i had never even heard of but i was so intrigued by the sounds of the pipe organ that he was telling me about that he had in his home which he didn't tell me very much about but i got the feeling had quite a mystique about it that i talked my parents into a trip that summer and i walked in these halls for the first time that tender age and first found the glorious pipe organ here perched high on a loft in the side wall of the great hall and to june vision this were going to be as grand as it turned out to be at that particular time the largest thing in an organ that i had encountered was a local organ in our just church in lumberton north carolina and i just had no scope of what this could be of course the organ to chapel was a huge instrument that i had just encountered that weekend but i still had no idea that someone could actually have a pipe organ this size in a residence of course i wasn't exactly ready for a residence like this either tell us about some of the other things that impressed you about johnnie's hammond jr the man's dullness the overpowering sensitivity the magnificent scope of his mind his mind was always fifteen steps ahead of anything that you could say he could complete a sentence for you before you even got the thought thinnest and it was so obvious that you were in the presence of a brilliant sensitive individual hammet introduce you to the instrument he took me on a tour of the pipe organ on a tour of the towers and the private museums in the back where there are still artifacts that a lot of the public doesn't get to see and needless to say i was all stricken speechless and did you have many opportunities to play the organ after that well after that i began playing coming to the castle fairly frequently and playing a few programs and then on one of the trips here i met marcel the price who was here at the time he of course was a very close friend of dr ham and that meeting in actually ended with my applying for a scholarship and winning that scholarship to study to study at paris conservatory with marcel to pray of course in the meantime john has haven't had passed away i moved back to boston to do some work with the boston symphony in the boston pops in the early seventy's and came back to the castle met the current curator of the museum at that time and made arrangements along with the organist to were in residence here at that time to start doing some programs and i did a whole series of concerts back in the early seventy's my career then took me on the road and i moved to new york and it has been about an eighteen year gap when i finally came back to the boston area and when i did move back to boston one of the first places that i came back to the hammond castle and of course met on better ground and has the organ changed a lot during the years of your absence well of course the new console the mechanism that we have here is far far in advance of the console that was on the instrument at the time that i was playing it before however this new console is certainly nothing that john has hammond himself would not have done as a matter of fact i think as advanced and as wonderful of the computer features are that we have here and the things that are on no other pipe organ in the whole world i would imagine if he were still alive there would be even more so what you're saying is dr hammond is always innovating in the kitchen really improving the pipe or were additions made to the instrument from one thousand thirty's all the way through the sixty's and at present we're we're endeavoring to continue that and what were his views on the pipe organ and its versatility well of course he very frequently quoted wolfgang amadeus mozart in saying that the organ was the king of instruments and it indeed was the king of instruments to him it was a passion with him of course he himself was not a musician his playing was limited to just holding a few notes and listening to the magnificently beautiful sounds which he loved but he had a passion for the instrument for the mechanism of the instrument for the music the music  capabilities of the instrument that way and some of the things on this instrument show forth his almost intuitive knowledge of music even though he himself was not a performing musician i understand that the original console had some tab stops with dr hammond's initials on them tell us about those well that means basically the stop tablets wore his own creation these were special favorite things of his and some of these were sounds that he actually developed by making combinations of different sounds that were already in existence pretty impressive so which of his inventions and innovations that dr haven't made her still in use today on pipe organs well of course many of the mechanical features that we have on modern pipe organs are directly related to him and many of the compositions that we have for instance the so referring back to your own innovative and challenging compositions how did dr hammond influence you in that regard i guess in some ways he was an early age hero to me and i've patterned a lot of the things and especially the creative forces in my life after what i felt and saw in him now knowing johnny's hammond's great passion for the organ did he ever learn to play the pipe organ herself oh he often said that he would like to to play but of course he knew that the great discipline that it would take to take the art to the level that he could accept it would be impossible along with everything else he did in his life you have to understand that john has hammond jr would not have been content to learn a scale or to learn a simple church him if he was going to become a musician he would have wanted to play seattle's newest hand off choir will be performing at seven pm grace lutheran church and the morning you will hear the choir soloist and the lovely concert violinist as well thank you for joining us on this episode of crescendo we hope to see you next time