Tribute
PIPE DREAMER: In the organ world, Craighead’s influence was “like a tidal wave.” (Photo: Eastman School)“A gentle giant.” That is how Michael Barone, host and producer of the nationally broadcast public radio program Pipedreams, characterized David Craighead in a program devoted to David’s life and art that aired in September 1997. Those three words exemplified, in a minimalist way, all that David embodied in his legendary career as a concert organist, as professor of organ at the Eastman School for 37 years, and as a dedicated church musician at Rochester’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church for 48 years.
David died in March at age 88. As a performer, he’d been at the pinnacle of his profession. He possessed a prodigious technique, and could play the most demanding literature with ease and fluency. David Higgs, professor and chair of organ and historical keyboards at the Eastman School, noted upon David’s passing: “He was a virtuoso performer, able to make the most difficult technical passages seem easy; he was a tireless champion of new music for our instrument.”
David was geared in the most positive way possible toward helping his students achieve that same fluency, making his job obsolete—for them, at least. In 1974, the Eastman School awarded him its first Eisenhart Award for Teaching Excellence. As a mentor, he was always encouraging, but never directing, or suggesting a particular career path. At the same time, he had an uncanny way of asking the right questions to help students discern for themselves the relative merits of one possibility over another.
David’s influence on the organ world over the past seven decades is more than a ripple on a pond. It’s like a tidal wave spread far and wide through his unparalleled performances, his careful and disciplined teaching, and the weekly ministry of countless church musicians leading congregations and choirs in worship. In their playing and in their teaching, his legacy lives on.
—Peter DuBois
DuBois is an assistant professor of sacred music and director of the Sacred Music Diploma program at the Eastman School; director of music and organist at Third Presbyterian Church in Rochester, and host/producer of the nationally syndicated public radio program “With Heart and Voice.”
