CHRISTINE Rich finds music and faith beautifully bound up together.
The 80-year-old former teacher has spent most of her life enthralled by the pleasure of music – and has just celebrated 50 years as the organist at St Ita’s Church in Brisbane’s Dutton Park.
“If there’s music in a church I have to be part of it,” she said.
“If it’s beautiful music, I just feel enriched.”
Mrs Rich’s introduction to music started young, growing up in Cairns.
Her talent was spotted at St Monica’s primary school when a choir-teaching nun asked if she wanted to learn the organ.
“I explained that I’d have to ask my mum. I was already taking piano lessons and I knew we didn’t have any money extra,” she said.
When the nun explained to young Christine that she wouldn’t have to pay for the organ lessons, she was overjoyed.
“I didn’t realise that they were picking people that they thought they could train so that they’d always have organists at the church.”
Within a short time Christine Rich was in the loft of the old Cairns Cathedral playing the organ for children’s School Mass and Sunday Mass.
It was daunting at first, but she grew in confidence and was inspired by the traditional hymns.
A few years later, in her early twenties, she recalls a very different musical experience – when world-acclaimed jazz boogie-woogie pianist Winifred Atwell visited Innisfail.
“Oh that was something unique,” she said, remembering an invitation to join in an all-night jam session with the famous Trinidadian musician.
“We had four pianos, double bass, sax, clarinet and drums.
“She [Winifred Attwell] would call a tune and call the keys – she might have said this is the riff that we’re going to do and she’d give us the run of chords. And we just went with it.”
She remembers how Attwell banged the piano keys hard and fast – very different to the way an organ is played by holding down the keys so the notes resonate.
Mrs Rich not only became an accomplished organist and pianist she loves to sing, and has also performed on a range of other instruments including the xylophone, zither, violin, recorder and clarinet.
Over many decades, first as a teacher in North Queensland, then in Victoria and finally Brisbane, she has organised and arranged for many school and church choirs.
“I am happy when I am singing, and I am happy when I am playing,” she said.
“You can get rid of the negatives in life.”
During her 50 years of service at St Ita’s, Mrs Rich has played solo, performed with singers and choirs and enriched the musical experience of attending church.
Her daughter Katrina, also touched with a love of music, remembers her own childhood days sitting beside her mother playing the organ in church, turning the music pages and singing harmonies.
Over the years Mrs Rich has introduced St Ita’s congregations to a huge catalogue of hymns and songs from traditional to contemporary.
She has introduced music from other churches, especially gathering material on her travels across Australia and overseas.
“I hear a hymn that we don’t have in our repertoire, I bring it back with me,” she said.
“And I say to the others, would you like to learn this?”
“And during the offertory we would introduce a new hymn to the congregation.
“They didn’t have to sing it, we would sing it for them for several weeks, so they could listen to it.
“And then we put the words up and let them join in.
“So we’ve probably put 20 or more things into our repertoire over the years.”
Mrs Rich said it gives her great pleasure to see the gift of music instilled in the St Ita’s church community.
While she says she is in the process of handing over, she is still active organising other, younger parishioners to sing and play.
