It is almost certainly unprecedented for a front-page feature article on the pipe organ to appear in a major city newspaper on the opening day of an organ festival and competition in that very city. The Hartford Courant, however, did just that on Saturday, September 21, 2024, the start of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival Hartford (ASOFH). Festival artistic director Christopher Houlihan and four of his Trinity College students were pictured with Trinity’s magnificent Austin organ in an article including interviews with those students.
Photo caption: Paul Jacobs stands between George Rau and Susan Woodard, his high school organ and piano teachers, respectively. The ceremony was for the honorary doctorate given to Jacobs by Washington & Jefferson College in 2017.