Friday September 28, 2001

They say it takes two to tango, and when UA music professor Pamela Decker plays the organ, the dance ensues.

Sunday afternoon, Decker presents the first concert of the Roy A. Johnson Memorial Organ Series at Holsclaw Recital Hall in the University of Arizona Fine Arts Complex.

"You could definitely say virtually all of my music for 20 years now has been based on dance rhythms," Decker said.

The concert explores different genres of dance music, and in particular, the tango. An ensemble will perform a tango piece composed by Winifred Williams - an engineer, composer and Decker's former student.

Williams described the appeal of tango as joyful.

"The tango is a lark. It's romantic, fun and fantasy," she said. "(It is) a combination of the way we wish to see ourselves and the way we are seen."

Music department faculty members Wanda Brister, mezzo-soprano; Grayson Hirst, tenor; and accordion player James O'Brien, will accompany the piece.

Decker characterized the ensemble pieces as a cross between an operetta scene and a ballet. The first half of the concert will encompass such various styles as jazz, French impressionism, operatic aria and tango.

Although pieces in the first segment were written by a variety of composers, the second segment is strictly music composed and performed by Decker, all in the tango style.

"There's a spontaneity combined with excellent technique," Williams said.

Decker started small, both literally and figuratively.

"I started the organ at age 9, which is very unusual. I could just barely perch on the edge of the bench," Decker said. "I always knew I wanted to be an organist. It just called to me."

Decker considers herself both an organist and composer. Her doctoral program at Stanford included organ performance and composition, and Decker is quick to point out that one does not exclude the other.

"I'm not half organist and half composer; I'm all organist and all composer," she said. "I do both. I wouldn't like to think of myself as half-baked."

Decker composes and plays in many musical genres, including the tango, and is familiar with the unusual relationship between the organ and the tango.

In the mid-19th century, an instrument called the bandoneon, similar to the accordion, was invented as an inexpensive alternative to the organ for financially struggling churches.

Eventually the "great tangueros," or tango performers, adopted the bandoneon. Although originally intended for religious purposes, the bandoneon became an instrument of folk music and tango.

Decker explained the relationship of the organ and bandoneon and the reason why the organ belongs in Holsclaw Hall - not houses of ill repute.

"Here is a sacred instrument so related to a secular instrument. If the bandoneon can be a substitute for the organ in church, then the organ can fill in for the bandoneon in other types of genres," she said. "The organ never made its way to the brothel because there was never enough room for it there."

In addition to the organ, Decker is an accomplished pianist and harpsichordist. She received a doctorate in musical arts from Stanford University and was awarded a Fulbright Grant in 1980 to study the organ in Germany. She also won several prizes in national and international competitions, produced four CDs and performed in America, Canada and Europe.