Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009

Organist wows crowds with her perpetual motion

Wherever Carol Williams sits down at the organ, she leaves critics scouring the thesaurus for new superlatives.

Just one look at her Internet site, www.melcot.com, and it's easy to understand why. In a video of Rimsky-Korsakov's exhausting "Flight of the Bumblebee" she is a study in perpetual motion. While her fingers fly across the keyboards, her feet are doing a nonstop dance up and down the pedals.

Ditto on Khachaturian's equally demanding "Sabre Dance." So, throw in her charismatic humor and you're in for one extraordinary evening when she pulls out all the stops during a 7:30 p.m. concert Friday at St. Paul's United Church of Christ, 115 W. B. St. in Belleville. Admission is by freewill offering.

British-born, Williams was raised in a Welsh family with myriad musical influences. She began private lessons at the age of 5, often able to read the music before the title of the piece.

She would earn top honors at the Royal Academy of Music, study at the prestigious Church of St. Sulpice in Paris and continue her postgraduate work at Yale University, where she won the Charles Ives prize for outstanding achievement. She earned her doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music -- along with the Helen Cohn award for excellence.

Since then, performances have taken her from Sweden to Monaco, Estonia to Singapore, including the inaugural recital on a newly installed Austin organ in Beijing's Forbidden City. In 2001, San Diego appointed her civic organist, making her the first woman in the world to earn such a designation. A regular broadcaster in England and America, she also hosts the video series "TourBus," featuring the great and small organs of the world.

"I want to bring the organ to new audiences and, with my performances, make people feel good," she says of her life's ambition.

She'll likely win new converts during her program here Friday night. In addition to "Flight of the Bumble Bee," she will put on a program that spans the musical ages from Bach, Pachelbel and Beethoven to Fats Waller's "Alligator Crawl" and Will Hudson's "Moonglow." She also is slated to team up with St. Paul's Norbert Krausz for a piano-organ duet on "Songs for Thanksgiving" by Stephen Nielson and Ovid Young.

The concert is part of the church's Fine Arts Series.