James O’Donnell knew he wanted to be an organist after hearing his grandfather play.
His grandfather was a doctor and amateur organist who had an organ in his home.
“He had one of those early Hammond organs with a full classical pedal board and a speaker in the basement,” O’Donnell said. “It sounded like St. Paul’s Cathedral when he played. I just, for some reason, loved it. …
“I just wanted to do that, and I liked everything that it stood for, and I liked everything about it, and I saw myself doing that.”
O’Donnell is now a professor in the practice of organ at Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in New Haven, Connecticut, and has had tenures at the Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral, both in London, England.
He will be performing next in the Virtuoso Organ Concert series on Friday, May 19, at 7:30 p.m. in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in Salt Lake City and streamed on The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square’s YouTube channel. His performance will include selected works by Johann Sebastian Bach, César Franck, Olivier Messiaen and Charles-Marie Widor.
“It’s what they call an iconic organ. And, of course, it’s an iconic place,” he said of the Tabernacle organ and the Salt Lake Tabernacle. “I’m really thrilled to be here. It’s the first time I’ve played this instrument …
“It’s a wonderful instrument, full of color and very cohesive. I’m excited about it.”
O’Donnell, who is Catholic, has previously been in Salt Lake City for musical conferences and performed at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in February 2019. He got to know the musicians there through a Catholic Church conference when he was the master of music at Westminster Cathedral in London. He kept in contact when he went to Westminster Abbey. The musicians from the cathedral also came to London.
O’Donnell served as organist and master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey for 23 years, which included being responsible for all musical aspects of the abbey’s work, training and conducting the abbey choir in its daily choral services, recordings, concerts and broadcasts. He also directed the music for the September 2022 state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and other national events.
“At the abbey, we were making music every day and singing every day,” O’Donnell said. There are eight statutory services a week. There was a residential choir school, professional choir singers or lay vicars, and a team of organists.
When playing the organ, whether in a concert or for a religious service, it’s more than just an organist playing, O’Donnell said.
“It’s about the music and the communication and the interpretation — and actually serving the music and your message about the music to people,” O’Donnell said.
At Friday’s concert, he hopes listeners, whether they are interested in organ music or just happened to be on Temple Square, will enjoy it.
“I hope that they think, ‘This is great music, and I want to listen to more of that,’” he said. “I just hope people, when they see, they will enjoy it and they’ll see this amazing Tabernacle and the organ.”
Learning to play music
As he was learning to play and exploring music, he said that it was a lot of music at his house and many opportunities to learn. “What worked for me was to be in a very open environment where I wasn’t stood over or forced to practice,” O’Donnell said.
As his interest was in the organ, he learned to first play the piano. When he got “a certain stage of proficiency with the piano” and his legs were long enough to reach the pedal board, he began studying the organ at around 11 years old.
“I was very lucky with the teachers I had. They were superb and encouraged me,” he said. He began at the Royal College of Music through a program for high school students. He later went to Cambridge University, and then got his first job as an organist.
At one point, he tried playing woodwind instruments, but “it wasn’t working for me, so we stopped.”
O’Donnell said learning to sing, including singing in choirs, can help with training aspiring young musicians.
“I was very lucky. I’ve been able to make my profession in music,” he said. “I’ve worked in amazing place, and it’s been great. And still is.”
How to watch live or stream
The Virtuoso Performance Series concerts are free and open to everyone 8 years and older. No tickets are required. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., and patrons should be in their seats by 7:15 p.m.
Due to construction on Temple Square, use the gates on West Temple Street. See current access on the map here.
This concert will also be livestreamed on the choir’s YouTube channel at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 19, and will be available on-demand after the performance ends.
About the Tabernacle organ
The Tabernacle pipe organ has five manuals, or keyboards, and 206 ranks of organ pipes and is among the world’s largest instruments. Its golden pipes are made from wood staves fashioned from Utah timber and still add to the sound of the famous instrument today.
The Tabernacle organ dates to 1867, when it was first put into service with about 700 pipes, according to the Tabernacle Choir’s website. The case wasn’t completed until 1869, and organ designer and builder Joseph Ridges, a carpenter and cabinetmaker by trade, and his team continued to work on it.
Since then, the organ has been expanded and refurbished. A new organ, with some pipework from the previous organ, was installed in the 1940s and has also been expanded. Currently, the organ has 11,623 pipes.
The Tabernacle Organ Virtuoso Performance Series
This is the second of four virtuoso concerts scheduled for this year. Viktor Billa, Ukrainian organist and soloist who is an organist at Trinity United Methodist Church in Tallahassee, Florida, performed in February.
Later this year, the series will feature Daniel Kerr, Music Department chairman and professor of organ at BYU–Idaho, on Aug. 18, and Tabernacle organist Brian Mathias on Nov. 3. Each will be in the Salt Lake Tabernacle at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays, according to the schedule on the Tabernacle Choir’s website.
In 2022, the concerts featured James Higdon, an organist from the University of Kansas; Gabriele Terrone, the Cathedral of the Madeline’s organist and assistant director of music; and Andrew Unsworth, who has been a Tabernacle organist since 2007.
The Tabernacle Organ Virtuoso Performance Series started in 2022 and was created to showcase the Tabernacle organ and world-renowned organists.
The concerts with Billa, Terrone and Unsworth are available for on-demand viewing on the choir’s YouTube channel.