November 2: A Sunday Afternoon at the Organ Pavilion That Didn't Go According to Plan but Was Nice Anyway
by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Yesterday afternoon (Sunday, November 2) my husband Charles and I went to an unusual concert at the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. The original plan had been to have San Diego civic organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez play with the Navy and Marine Bands, but Raúl got called away to play a concert in Palm Desert and the military bands were unavailable due to the seemingly endless government shutdown. (Donald Trump gave an interview to 60 Minutes last night in which he made it clear that his price for ending the shutdown is total capitulation by the Democratic Party. No surprise there.) So Russ Peck was called in to throw together a program for the U.S. Navy’s “Fleet Week,” and naturally he relied on patriotic material as well as some of the medleys he’d played at his last Organ Pavilion appearance, when he performed on the “Not-So-Silent Movie Night” August 25, where he played live behind three Laurel and...