Kenneth Matthews (kennethm@slip.net)
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Influences and Interests
 
My first music lessons were with my father, who played Hammond and
piano in a well-known Atlanta restaurant/cocktail lounge weeknights
and in a Southern Baptist church on Sunday morning. (This dichotomy
has probably marked me for life.) I got really interested in the
organ when the church was in the process of choosing an organ for
the new building. My father was on the organ committee; he brought
home many fascinating brochures and proposals and tried to answer
my questions (like, "what is a rank?").
 
I started organ lessons at Emory University my freshman year, but
soon began studying with William Weaver at St. Anne's Episcopal
Church in Atlanta. Bill was responsible for the wonderful 1966
Flentrop at St. Anne's (as well as what were the best acoustics in
Atlanta). I eventually transferred to Stetson University in DeLand,
Florida, where I studied with Paul Jenkins, who was responsible for
the installation there of the first large tracker organ in an
American university recital hall (Beckerath, 1961). Both Bill and
Paul were wonderful teachers for whom I didn't work nearly hard
enough.
 
I went to the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale for graduate
school. My mother told me that if you couldn't say something nice
about someone, not to say anything at all: so I won't say anything
about the man with whom I formally studied at Yale. I was
fortunate, however, to be Stephen Loher's assistant at Trinity
on-the-Green, and the incomparable Woolsey Hall Skinner is a
terrific teacher itself. Joe Dzeda was a wonderful guide to its
riches.
 
After graduation, I came to San Francisco to study privately with
Richard Purvis, who had played (in Woolsey) what I think was the
finest organ recital I had ever heard. I intended to stay in San
Francisco for perhaps six months. That was sixteen years ago.
 
I played a 1924 Kimball (4/27) at First Church of Christ,
Scientist, San Francisco, for a decade. I then played a 1961
Whiteford Aeolian-Skinner (3/50) at the First Unitarian Church of
Berkeley for five years, followed by a year-long stint (as interim)
playing a 1989 Frobenius (2/23) for St. Stephen's Episcopal Church
in Belvedere (Marin County, just north of San Francisco).
 
My present position is parish musician at All Saints' Episcopal
Church, an Anglo-Catholic parish in the Haight-Ashbury district of
San Francisco, where I play a beautiful little Bigelow 2/11 tracker
(front cover of the Dec. 1991 issue of The American Organist).
 
For five years I played frequent weekend recitals at the California
Palace of the Legion of Honor, one of San Francisco's art museums,
which has a 1924 Skinner (4/63).
 
Employment
 
     Parish Musician, All Saints' Episcopal Church,
     San Francisco, California
 
Education
 
     Mus. M., Yale University (1978)
     B. Mus., Stetson University (1976)