Musician mixes genres

By By Anna Faltermeier (Contact)

Monday, November 13, 2006

Mark Harries shakes his shaggy, light-brown hair back from his eyes and moves the organ bench with a screech to make room for his 6-foot-4 frame. His fingers, which he says are stubby for an organist, begin to glide along the three rows of ox bone keys.

The room fills with a rich, intricate sound one might expect to hear at a wedding or funeral. But no one’s walking down the aisle of Bales Organ Recital Hall, adjacent to the Lied Center, where Harries practices several times each week.

Photo by Anna Faltermeier

Harries, an organ and church music major, hopes to be a full-time church music director. His day will be filled with conducting ensembles, directing and organizing music for services, playing at weddings and funerals and, in more traditional churches, playing the organ.

Harries enjoys listening to and playing Bach and church hymns. His favorite composer is Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer who writes strictly sacred music, dedicated with a religious purpose.

Harries has an aura of sincerity that looks at home behind his organ.

But the polite, soft-spoken senior from Vassar also plays drums for local rock band, Marry Me Moses. Despite its name, the band does not play Christian rock, although the name was chosen randomly while searching through the Bible.

Many Sundays Harries substitutes on organ in local churches. But on Tuesday nights, Harries plays the drums in the basement of lead singer Ted Kritikos’ house on New Jersey Street.

He tries to play softly. Harries said police have shown up twice on noise complaints.

The scene at a typical band practice is decidedly less sophisticated than the wood-paneled recital hall.

Cracked, yellow-painted walls and a cement floor scattered with beer caps dominate Kritikos’ basement, contrasting the stained glass windows, high ceiling and rows of seats in the recital hall.

The band plays mostly mellow rock. “I write mostly about girls,” Kritikos said as he smiled.

Sitting behind his blue glittered drum set, sipping on a Beck’s Oktoberfest beer, Harries looked less like a church organist and more like a Lawrence hipster.

But looks can be deceiving.

“Play that in the sixth scale degree,” he matter-of-factly told Jenny Davidson, the band’s bass player.

Davidson shot him an “as if” look. “What the hell does that mean?” she asked.

Despite some confusion, Harries’ band mates tend to be understanding of his formal musical knowledge.

“The pipe organ is the hardest musical instrument on earth to play; You’re playing Bach, you have two different manuals, you’re playing with your feet, and you’re pulling out stops,” Kritikos said. “Rock drumming is quite possibly the easiest.”

Kritikos said the band was glad to have Harries because his organ skills, including his sense of rhythm and general musical knowledge, made him a more musical drummer.

Harries even played accordion for one of the songs.

“He just played the keyboard part, but it got people’s attention,” Kritikos said.

Harries said the drums and organ were completely different, but complemented one another.

Michael Bauer, professor of organ and church music, agreed that the two instruments correlate.

“It’s probably the most important thing for an organist to have a really good sense of rhythm,” Bauer said. “I would think that percussion would help develop that.”

Besides drums and organ, Harries is interested in conducting choirs, something he’ll likely do as a church music director.

He and his girlfriend, Anne Kretsinger, share a passion for music. They are in a concert choir together and have been dating for two years.

“He’s majoring in something that he really loves,” she said. “It’s a hobby, but it’s also kind of his career too.”

Harries liked that his chosen career path involved going to church every Sunday. He said religion plays a big part in what he does.

“Ultimately I’m doing it because I feel I’ve been given a gift and someday I’m going to have to answer to that,” Harries said. “First and foremost you’re playing for God. He’s your audience and you’re using your talents to serve. The secondary purpose is to lead the congregation.”

Church music is in Harries’ genes. His father, Tom Harries, was a church organist for years and is now a Lutheran pastor.

The elder Harries said music always came naturally to Mark.

“We have a photo of him when he was little in PJs on his tiptoes to reach the piano keys,” he said.

The younger Harries wrote his first composition titled “The February Second Castle Song,” in second grade. Feb. 2 is his birthday.

Harries hopes to write compositions of his own in church music.

Bauer, his professor, said full-time jobs in organ and church music were in high demand. He has had eleven different church music jobs himself.

Harries, who will play his senior organ recital at 7:30 tonight at Bales Organ Recital Hall, said he arranged to have colored lights swirl the room as he plays a piece he says is “closely related to techno.”

Harries rarely settles for the ordinary. He said his dream job was to be a composer, something that was difficult in the general music world, but feasible in church music.

“Within the church music world they’re not looking for super hard music, they’re looking for music that average church players can do and I like the challenge of putting that limitation on it by writing something really good,” he said.

Harries is contemplating graduate school to earn a master’s degree in church music. He will graduate in May with an undergraduate degree in church and organ music.

Kansan staff writer Anna Faltermeier can be contacted at afaltermeier@kansan.com.

— Edited by Catherine Odson

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