30-year Tabernacle organist is retiring

John Longhurst is used to questions that demonstrate how little people understand the work of a professional organist.

After this weekend, the questions will shift from "What is your day job?" to "What do you plan to do next?"

Longhurst, senior Tabernacle organist for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will accompany the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Sunday morning broadcast and then retire after a 30-year career at Temple Square.

Longhurst wrote the music for one of the LDS Church's best-known hymns, "I Believe in Christ," and has been involved in Temple Square expansions and changes that included construction of the Conference Center and major renovations at the Tabernacle.

"Never in my wildest imagination could I have conceived of the change that I would see on Temple Square in 30 years," he said in reflection. "If an organist had a chance to write a script for his career, you couldn't come up with anything more exciting, rewarding, challenging — it's hard to find enough adjectives to describe it."

Longhurst, 67, earned his doctorate in music at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York and was on the music faculty at Brigham Young University when he received a call inviting him to audition for an opening on the Tabernacle music staff early in 1977.

Alexander Schreiner, legendary in the LDS Church as a composer and as a Tabernacle organist for more than 50 years, was preparing to retire.

"He had always been 'Brother Schreiner' or 'Dr. Schriener' to me because I'd studied with him for a number of years. I got two degrees under his tutelage at the University of Utah, and so I'd always addressed him rather formally."

Longhurst was chosen as Schreiner's replacement, and the two overlapped for several months before Schreiner's retirement date arrived.

"I recall we were at a concert one evening, and I saw him sitting there alone as I came in, so I sat down next to him and said, 'Good evening, Brother Schreiner,' and he said, 'My name is Alex.' I've not forgotten that, because all at once it said to me, 'We're equals now."'

There are eight pipe organs on Temple Square and a music staff that includes four full-time and two part-time organists. Being an organist in the church's best-known venue does engender "some sort of a reputation," Longhurst said modestly. But in a church where congregational organists are all volunteers, people often ask Longhurst how he could possibly make a career out of playing the organ.

"They see me 30 minutes on a Sunday morning and twice a year at General Conference, and they're wondering, 'What on Earth you could do as a full-time church employee.' So they have no concept of what there is beneath the surface."