At the darkest points of his life, William Randolph has turned to his music for comfort and the inspiration to go on. Lying on a hospital bed undergoing dialysis treatment on September 11, 2001, he looked on in horror at the television screen as one of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre collapsed, aware that his dearest friend was among those facing a certain death.
“That totally changed my life as I knew it from that day and it has taken ten years to reinvent Bill Randolph again,” he said.
He told Easy magazine, “With the grief and the illness, the kind of work that I do was really a blessing because my music became my therapy. That’s what kept me alive and going I always tell people that if I was in any other type of business or work, I am not sure if I would have made it through, literally watching somebody perish on TV while you are attached to a dialysis machine.”
“That Bill Randolph died that morning. It took eight years of grief. I never stopped playing. My music was my therapy and it was very dark therapy because there was no joy in it but it was something that mechanically I would do.”
Joy has returned to Randolph’s life. The church organist, who suffered with kidney disease for almost ten years and received a transplant in 2008, said last week “the whole world is a whole new experience and my music has come back again.” He is also gradually managing to look beyond his loss of 9/11.
Barbados was beneficiary to the rejuvenation in the accomplished American organist’s life when he participated in the island’s first Barbados Classical Music Festival last week.
He had given recitals in the island’s churches in the past, but this time it was special. He was excited to see the number of emerging young organists with promising potential. After working with four young organists he thinks the tradition of classical organ music here is “alive and well”.
“This particular trip I am seeing the future organists of Barbados. I think Barbados has always had a good representation of skilled organists and I am very happy about what I see for the future,” he said.
Randolph is director of music and organist at the Church of the Intercession in New York City. He is also on staff at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York and an adjunct organist at Colombia University.
“It is a good profession if you love working for the church,” he says.
“I consider myself a church musician. I am more of a church musician that likes to help enhance the liturgy and the music,” said the man who is convinced his career was chosen for him by God.
Randolph started piano at age three, and recalled how his mother would tell stories of him going to church on Sunday mornings and standing in the pew just marvelling at the sound of the organ.
He attended the Performing Arts High School in New York City and played all the instruments in school, with aspirations of playing clarinet. But the organ was the instrument to which he aspired most.
When his parents joined Riverside Church, one Sunday morning their 13-year-old son walked up to the church’s famous organist Edward Swan, a leading organ instructor known for his exquisite church music, and asked “Mr Swan, do you do this for a living?”
Swan’s response – “It is not about making money in this business. You have to love what you do” – was the spur he needed to nail his conviction that he would be a church organist. To his delight, when he gained entry to the Manhattan School of Music, the same Dr Swan was the chair head and he finally got his wish to study with the great organist.
Randolph’s Sundays are busy “from early morning until night.” He considers the organist’s role in connecting the clergy and the liturgy a key factor in the way the congregation is motivated by the total worship experience.
‘Worship and liturgy have to have a flow to it,” is his take on the style of worship that represents the Anglican tradition, a style to which he remains committed, favouring this over what has emerged in America’s mega churches.
“All traditional churches are being challenged because people watch TV and they see these mega churches that are filled to the gills with somebody that is more of a superstar than a real minister.”
“It is all about lights, camera, and action and there is no real singing. Most of these places don’t have organs. That is the way they like to worship but I don’t like trying to force that into a tradition like the Anglican Church.”
While he has no beef with praise music and concedes it is “wonderful in its setting and its environment” he defends the more sedate traditional order in which the liturgy is allowed to flow with the accompanying liturgical music.
In his view, “The praise music sometimes to me becomes yelling. It is not music singing and so you yell ‘Praise ye the Lord’ or ‘Jesus’ a hundred times over and over again as the drums are beating and the tambourines are going and people are supposedly in the Holy Spirit. My response is you should do that on Saturday night, go to disco, shake, rattle and roll and then sit still when you are in church.”
“‘Be still and know that I am God’ – that is where worship and the liturgy have to have a flow to it.”
Recent reports on the steady decline in demand for traditional church organists as congregation numbers in Anglican churches continue to dwindle prompted Randolph to make the observation: “As [with] anything, the church is going through an identity change and while the classic organ music is trying to hold on, we are competing with contemporary music and the electronic age of music making. There are always ebbs and flows and I think this is a transition period.”
He is convinced the Anglican Church will survive. His hope is in young people, keeping them involved and educating them. “Don’t just grab them by the ear and say, ‘You are going to church because this is where your grandmother went’”.
In the meantime, this church organist plans to continue doing the job that has been the most rewarding feature of his life.
