Jerrick Cavagnaro - Firm Foundations (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

In this album I wish to present a program of both improvised music and repertoire. I have always had a great love and admiration for improvisation. Dating back to my early years as a young piano student, I enjoyed creating my own pieces, both on the fly and written down. My musical flame was only fanned further by consecutive summers spent playing keyboard and singing in a rock and roll summer camp as a middle and high schooler all the while singing in church and school choirs.

I think my experiences in both church and rock camp set me up to appreciate a wide variety of musical styles, something which I believe is evident in my improvisation and playing. Thus the music on this disc, both improvised and written, is varied and diverse. In selecting the repertoire, I aimed to include works outside the standard organ canon — pieces that are less frequently performed and that suited the character of the organs at Trinity Church, Boston.

Trinity’s two organs (nave and chancel) are playable from one console. In 2018, a complete restoration of the Nave organ was undertaken, harkening back to what Skinner envisioned in his 1926 American Symphonic installation. Given its breadth of color, warmth, fire and my familiarity with the instrument, it seemed the obvious choice of venue for this album. This will be the debut solo organ album recorded since the 2018 restoration. It is my hope you will enjoy its beauty and depth through this varied selection of repertoire and improvisations.

The music of Florence Price has enjoyed a rightful rise in popularity in the last decade. The first African American woman to have a work performed by a major American Symphony orchestra, Price’s compositional style fuses elements of Western classical and traditional African American music. Price modeled her First Sonata for Organ closely after Alexandre Guilmant’s Sonata in D minor, Op. 42, which she performed for the composer while a student at New England Conservatory. Guilmant is said to have congratulated her publicly for her execution of the difficult number. Despite its similarities with the Guilmant, Price breathes her own unique voice into the work through American-sounding harmonies and motives. Here I present the first movement alone. An almost Germanic introduction gives way to the exposition of the main theme (in a minor mode) played by the pedal alone. This is followed by a second theme, lighter in character. A development ensues until a more grandiose recapitulation of the second theme on full organ. Price ends the piece on a more serious note, returning to the drive of the first theme and concluding on a sinister D minor chord.

Price would have been familiar with the American Symphonic organs being built in the early 1900s, which I believe is why her sonata is so well suited to Trinity’s newly restored organ. In fact, she wrote this sonata only one year after Skinner’s 1926 installation of the Trinity organ. I have taken liberties in departing from Price’s minimal registrations in order to more fully orchestrate this movement. Given Price’s imaginative orchestrations in her larger scale orchestral works, the Trinity organ’s wealth of colors, and her familiarity with organs of this type I hope Ms. Price would approve.

In the final round of the American Guild of Organists’ (AGO) National Competition in Organ Improvisation (NCOI) in 2024, competitors were tasked with leading a congregational hymn that included a creative introduction, interlude, and reharmonized last verse. I was delighted to discover the hymn was How firm a foundation to the tune FOUNDATION, one I knew and loved and had grown up singing in church. This tune first appeared in Joseph Funk’s A Compilation of Genuine Church Music, an early shape-note tunebook published in 1832 that was influential in the American South. It later appeared in the more famous 1835 tunebook Southern Harmony. The hymntune’s melody, like most early American folk tunes, is pentatonic and rhythmic. The 13 variations I present here were inspired, in part, by the final round of NCOI. The variations offer an array of 21st century harmonizations, accompaniments, styles, and modes and once again showcase the symphonic splendor and tonal diversity of Trinity’s organs.

Tracklist:
01. First Sonata for Organ: I. Maestoso - Allegro
02. Improvisation on How Firm a Foundation
03. Improvisations on 4 La Farge Windows: I. Presentation of the Virgin
04. Improvisations on 4 La Farge Windows: II. The Resurrection
05. Improvisations on 4 La Farge Windows: III. The New Jerusalem
06. Improvisations on 4 La Farge Windows: IV. Christ in Majesty
07. Fantaisie No. 2 in D-Flat Major, Op. 101
08. Improvisation on Salve Regina
09. Improvisation on a Theme by Jeffrey Brillhart
10. Toccata & Fugue


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