Spreckels Organ Pavilion Concert, Monday, June 24, 2019
by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night the Spreckels Organ Society launched its 32 nd annual summer festival with what was largely the same program with which it closed last year’s on September 3, 2018: a rock tribute concert featuring a local ensemble playing songs by Led Zeppelin in the first set and Pink Floyd in the second. Just why our egomaniac civic organist, Raúl Prieto Ramírez, picked the same two bands to pay tribute to he did last year instead of broadening his horizons is a mystery, but then Raúl’s rather dubious tenure as San Diego civic organist has been marked by a very limited repertoire. I suspect it’s because he’s such a narcissist he doesn’t want to be seen with music on the music stand so the audience will ooh and ahh over him and think, “Wow! He doesn’t need music! He plays it all from memory !” — which means he can only play pieces he knows well enough to play them by memory. The concert program was