Nathan Avarkian Wows an Audience in Malvern

Last night I motored down to Malvern Town Hall in order to hear the American Organist, Nathan Avakian play the Compton organ. I had heard him play in the U.S., last year and he certainly impressed with his skills at such a young age.

When you think of it all the great cinema organists of the past learned their skills rather young - and the hard way - they were put in front of a Laurel and Hardy and told to accompany it. The audience would let them know whether they were successful or not.

Thankfully Nathan has not been put through such hard ropes and instead has been progressively learning all about the organ since he was a wunderkind. At the moment he receives tuition from Donna Parker who has had and still enjoys a successful career as a cinema organist.

The thing I admire about some people is that they can do more than one thing at a time - and I don't mean chewing gum and farting. Nathan impresses further in that he seems to be able to do half a dozen things at once. I have seen very few people who have such a skill as to be able to utilise both feet playing the pedalboard with such discipline whilst both hands are engaged on the manuals and stop tablets. I have difficulty in even finding the right pedal to hit without a quick glance down to see my foot is in the right position - Nathan can do it as if he were blindfolded.

The trick in playing the cinema organ is to use it to its full advantage as a virtual one-man orchestra - well, let's face it the proper name for the instrument is a 'unit orchestra'. You can separate all the units that make up a melody, such as accompaniment, melody line, harmony, rhythm etc., by doing your handiwork and footwork around the keys and pedals. You can also bring in the many instrumental sounds as feature in an orchestra - either in combination or in solo. Some organists like to muddle the combinations in order to make a loud noise without realising that at times a solo instrumental can be so subtle and so succinct. Either that or they make the organ sound like a glorified accordion or hurdy-gurdy.

Nathan utilised some very interesting orchestrations - proving that there is still room to experiment on these instruments. His pianissimos using at times the enclosed chrysoglot were quite appealing. He also proved that a cinema organ was quite capable of rocking away to some of the more modern repertoire - even though the names of the selections went above the heads of most of the audience still listening to Bing Crosby and Ella FitzGerald on their wind-up gramophones. To assist with these rock numbers, Nathan has put down a backing track on his laptop - this consists of all the boom-boom business of loud drums etc., - he fills in with the rest of ditty on the organ. One shouldn't pooh-pooh this organ with boom box type of thing - it may be what's needed to capture younger audiences to the mighty cinema organ!

Nathan must be one of the few people still around scoring silent pictures. he works with young film-makers at college who have made short silent pictures - of three minutes in length and he writes and plays the music to them. He says that these young people are spellbound when sitting in the cinema watching the films on the big screen and seeing him there live, playing the accompaniment on the one man band. We saw three of these films and they were quite good considering some of them were made by 13 year olds - it also proved that music is such an important factor in films. Nathan's scores accompanied well.

Nathan's selections ranged from an opening march from Disney - one more Disney piece, a few classical numbers, an updated "Flight of the Bumble Bee" - now called "Bumble Boogie", a couple of Jazz pieces - one played on the piano, some Gershwin - a nice arrangement of "Embraceable you" and the highlight of the night - well for me - a selection from "42nd Street" which was arranged and played superbly.

A nice night's entertainment - just a pity there weren't a few more in the audience.