LDS Church News: A singularly unique life

Frank Ashdown leads a singularly unique life.

A recently retired medical doctor, Brother Ashdown spends Tuesday and Friday

of every week at his home in Alamogordo, N. M., composing organ music.

Wednesdays and Saturdays, however, find him in an entirely different state — literally and figuratively — as the produce

manager for the Bishops' Storehouse in El Paso, Texas.Brother Ashdown became introduced to the organ at the preternaturally young

age of 13 when he was called to be his ward's organist in Amarillo, Texas.

Although he'd been taking piano lessons from the time he was 6 years old, he

quickly realized how different from each other the playing of the organ and

piano are.

\"One has to develop the technique of playing the pedals with both feet while

at the same time playing with the hands,\" he said. \"You have to be able to

develop an independence of the feet from the hands so that the music in the

pedals can move along simultaneously with music from the hands.

\"The technique of playing the organ is a little different with the hands than

it is on the piano because all of the notes have to remain sustained. You don't

have a damper pedal to sustain the notes, so you have to learn to do a lot of

finger substitution on the keyboards of the organ.\"

An early exposure to playing the organ spawned a deep affinity for the

instrument within Ashdown that has lasted a lifetime.Read the full story on ldschurchnews.com.

This story is provided by the LDS Church News, an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is produced weekly by the Deseret News.