The Man From Kangaroo

One has to be a little strange to be a brilliant organist. Much of one’s time will be spent yearning to play the World’s Great Organs. It’s not like you can install a pipe organ in your home. Well, I guess if you did, it would be considered a little strange, and thus something that a brilliant organist would do.

I’d never been to the Melbourne Town Hall before. It was obviously designed before things like acoustics were thought about. The place echoes like someone’s bathroom. Why they don’t just give up, tile the place and install a shower, is beyond me. Thing is, they’ve got a fucking huge pipe organ. At nearly 10,000 pipes, it’s the fuckingist hugeist “Grand Organ” in the southern hemisphere. Or so they say. There are bigger pipe organs (like, ahem, in Sydney), but for this specific kind of organ, it’s the one.

Anyway. Back to the people who play them. I knew brilliant organist, his name was Steve Toth. He was strange, troubled, but brilliant. He didn’t so much play

the organ, but play with the organ. He danced. He had a fantastic time. The windows shook and the babies wet themselves. Truly a figure of greatness.

Ernesto Maurice Corpus, a diminutive Italian gentleman with interesting taste in clothes and a bit of a mullet, strikes me as a bit strange as well. He improvised a score to , entertainingly and with a bit of a wink to both ecclesiastical and pre-talkie film music. He remained essentially motionless on the organ bench, with his fingers working a blur over the keys. Very impressive.

Oh, and there was a movie too. It was okay.