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Keith is magnificent. Can't wait!
Once a week, every week when Keith Shafer was 14, he would travel to New Haven or Hartford, Conn., a 50-mile journey from his home in Ledyard.
"But what else was I going to do?" Mr. Shafer said. His New England farming town didn't have a proper organ.
He's 55 now, and the longtime director of music at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. He's spent 25 years behind the organ of St. Paul's. A concert today will celebrate his tenure with the church.
"I'm going to play some music from my first organ recital when I was just 14 years old," he said.
The hourlong concert will include some of his favorites, including a Johann Sebastian Bach piece and works by Cesar Franck.
Mr. Shafer knows the pieces well.
"I've lived with them all my life," he said. But he still has practiced an hour a day for weeks. Some are more complicated than others, Mr. Shafer explained, but he says he loves them all.
"One goes on for seven or eight pages. It's cause for carpal tunnel syndrome," he said jokingly.
The concert is a tradition at St. Paul's -- the annual concert on Rose Sunday. It marks the halfway point in the Lenten season, when clergy at some churches wear rose-colored vestments in place of the traditional purple.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Rose Sunday organ concert
WHEN: 4 p.m. today
WHERE: St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 605 Reynolds St.
COST: Free; (706) 724-2485
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