Jan Kraybill

A Force for Good: Kansas City Artists Perform for National Association of Pastoral Musicians’ National Convention

concert review by Libby Hanssen in KC Studio Magazine, July 12, 2024 (click link for full text; highlights reproduced below)

Some of the best musicians in Kansas City were brought together for a national audience in a special concert in Helzberg Hall. The concert was part of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians’ 47th national convention, which took place in Kansas City July 8-11. 

“Fountains of Faith: A Concert of Forces” included Grammy Award-nominee Jan Kraybill on organ, the William Baker Festival Singers, and the multi-award-winning Fountain City Brass Band for a performance of sacred and secular music for an enthusiastic crowd. 

Though the stage regularly sees the power of the 80 person Kansas City Symphony, for this performance the 30 strong brass band and 30+ member Festival Singers filled the space with a buffet of style and sound that put the varied talents of Kansas City on full display. 

Kraybill opened the performance with Grayston Ives’ Intrada, with a cascade of fanfares in all-consuming sound and a full throttle final chord on Helzberg Hall’s Julie Irene Kauffman Casavant Organ, Opus 3875. …

Kraybill performed two more solos, bookending the Singers’ set of spirituals. She is a force to be reckoned with all on her own, and her rendition of “Outer Hebrides: A Fantasy on Three Traditional Celtic Melodies,” by Paul Halley, had an ethereal air, the pipes of the organ and arcing swoop of Helzberg Hall bathed in green light. Her final solo was the intermezzo from Charles Widor’s Symphony no. 6 for organ, a marathon cascade of tones. …

The final piece of the evening was a collaborative performance of the finale from Camille Saint-Saëns’ Symphony no. 3 “Organ Symphony” in an arrangement for brass band and organ by Fountain City’s founder and principal euphonium Lee Harrelson, and once again featuring Kraybill, who opened the piece with a thunderous chord. 

The piece lost nothing in the arrangement. Though it’s a brassy work to begin with, a bold and tricky piece with lots of interwoven moving parts, the string and woodwind parts were aptly handled by trumpets, cornets and euphoniums (with a little added help from a player back on piano). The hymn quotations had all the gravitas of heraldic celestials. The sheer volume of this performance caused the paper program in my hand to vibrate. 

The concert could not have been a better representation of Kansas City artists and the multiple rounds of applause amplified the audience’s appreciation. 

Super Bowl Superstitions and a Free Organ Concert

short interview on the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts website, February 8, 2024

The centerpiece of Helzberg Hall, the Julia Irene Kauffman Casavant Organ, Opus 3875, is so special it has its own conservator. GRAMMY-nominated artist Jan Kraybill has been playing and advocating for the organ since the Kauffman Center opened in 2011. Kraybill herself, however, is also a fascinating subject. She is an international concert organist, pianist and harpsichordist; a dynamic speaker, educator, church musician and has hosted a free organ concert on Super Bowl Sunday for the last 24 years. In anticipation of this Sunday’s Super Bowl, the Kauffman Center asked Kraybill a few questions about herself.

Can you describe your first European piano recital?
I was very fortunate to get to spend the summer living with a family in England when I was a junior in high school. My experiences there opened my eyes in many ways to the much wider world, and awakened in me a love of travel, which I’m happy to say is now a regular part of my professional life! Part of the deal, when this was proposed to my parents, was that I keep up my practicing while there and that there would be performance opportunities. I was grateful to be able to play a solo concert in Andover, England.

How do audiences in different countries regard the organ?
Just like in the U.S., people bring a variety of experiences and impressions of the organ as an instrument. Some have heard it played only at funerals or weddings. Some have heard it as part of a baseball game. Some are lifelong fans of classical organ concerts. Some sing hymns with it every Sunday in church. Some love it as part of their favorite jazz or rock bands. Some have never heard this instrument. What I try to do is bridge all of those impressions when designing my performances, giving people something that is familiar, while expanding boundaries of what the organ and organists can do.

With all the places you’ve traveled, why have you chosen Kansas City as your home?
Basically, because of life circumstances, Kansas City chose me! Earlier in my career, my aim was to move to one or the other of the coasts to “make it.“ I’m so glad that I stayed in Kansas City! The arts scene here is so supportive, diverse and vibrant, and, of course, our beautiful Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts has raised the bar for all of us who live and perform here, in addition to attracting international talent to our city. I’m so grateful to the donors who made this venue possible and to the staff and volunteers who continue to make it active and beautiful.

You enjoy many activities outside of your work with organs. Can you tell us about your lace-making hobby?
It’s true, I have a hard time sitting still, so I enjoy many creative outlets. When I was a child, my grandmother and mother taught me how to do the kind of lace-making called tatting. It’s a wonderfully relaxing hobby, a way to create beautiful gifts, and easy to take with me on airplanes.

Tell us about your 25^th annual Super Bowl Sunday Organ Concert
I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for a quarter century! It’s become a tradition, and I do have to say that the last two times I played this concert for an in-person audience, the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. (My performances had to go online for two years between those wins, due to COVID concerns, and the Chiefs were not victorious.) So I believe this concert tradition is part of their good-luck charms! This year, my theme is “Most Valuable Players.” I’ll begin the concert with a piece in honor of our KC Chiefs, as I always do when they are in the Super Bowl. I’ll follow that with works representing MVPs of the classical and organ musical worlds. One of those is also in honor of Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker: it opens with 3-1/2 pages of notes played by feet alone!

Concert kickoff is 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 11, at Community of Christ Temple. We’ll conclude by 3:30 p.m., prior to Super Bowl kickoff at 5:30 p.m. There will be free parking and free admission. Everyone is encouraged to wear Chiefs’ red and dress as casually as you’d like. Cameras will show live close-up views of my hands and feet in action, projected for the audience’s enjoyment. I’ve been loving rehearsing for this event, and I can’t wait to share it with everyone there! 

Vibrant and Organic: Kansas City Symphony Performs Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 and Premieres Rogerson’s “The Little Prince”

 concert review by Libby Hanssen in KC Studio Magazine, June 8, 2022 (click link for full text; highlights reproduced below)

In a concert of fantasy and excitement, the Kansas City Symphony gave a fresh, lively performance, including a commanding world premiere with a rising violin star. 

Guest conductor Gemma New led the ensemble with clarity and passion throughout Saturday’s performance in Helzberg Hall. 

Maurice Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite” was an exquisite jewel of shimmering color and character and, though it’s a challenging piece, had a clean, easy feeling to it. The orchestra gave this performance sprightly energy, delicate and responsive to New’s full gestures. ... 

Fantasy, too, shaped Chris Rogerson’s first violin concerto, commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony. (KCS premiered Rogerson’s “A Single Candle” in 2014 and “Of Simple Grace” in 2018 with cellist Yo-Yo Ma.) ... 

Based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s exquisite novella, “The Little Prince,” the concerto was written for his friend Benjamin Beilman, fresh talent new to Kansas City audiences and a performer to remember.

For Camille Saint-Saëns’ Symphony no. 3, nicknamed “Organ” for its organic and impressive use of the instrument, the orchestra was joined by Kansas City’s own Grammy Award-nominated Jan Kraybill. An always impressive work, the orchestra and soloist recorded it in 2013. 

From the questing opening, searching and reflective, to the “aha, found it!” release, the piece was triumph upon triumph. The symphony contains perhaps one of the loveliest melodies to exist in classical music, its lightness given such an uplifting, floating quality it brought to mind a vast skyfield, clouds in sunlight as far as the eye could see. 

It was exhilarating, too: New brought the orchestra right up close to the edge of overwhelming, without losing control. 

Kraybill is easily one of Kansas City’s–and the organ world’s–treasures. At times the use of organ was so subtle that it felt subconscious rather than heard, and then other times the effect is reversed: the crash of the chord so completely consuming that little else filtered through to comprehend. 

It’s heartening to hear a performance like this: new material performed with the same confidence of familiar works, standard repertoire performed with thrilling enthusiasm, the concert experience renewed and vibrant.

Orchestral Organ (CD review) in American Record Guide, September/October 2019 issue

 A program of mostly unfamiliar transcriptions, save for the Barber, Sibelius, and Mendelssohn. The art of transcription for the organ has a long history, beginning with Bach's Vivaldi transcriptions, through the Wagner transcriptions by Edwin Lemare in the early 20th Century, to today's practitioners, who don't hesitate to transcribe anything. All of these work very well for the organ and I found them effective and satisfying.

I was not familiar with Edvard Armas Jarnefelt, a Finnish-born Swedish composer, who studied with Busoni and Massenet. HIs 1900 orchestral miniature, Prelude, is delightful in the transcription by the American organist and composer Gordon Bach Nevin.

Jan Kraybill is organist at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City and organist at the international headquarters of the Community of Christ in Independence, Missouri. An energetic player, she obviously understands the originals and has a fine ear for color. She plays on the 2011, 4-manual, 102-rank French style Casavant in Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center. Excellent notes by the performer on the music, composers, and the art of transcription.