J. Warren Hutton--Master Teacher & Musician

J. Warren Hutton died in July of 2002 after an illustrious career as organ professor at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The following two tributes were given shortly after his death. The first was an article that appeared in The Tuscaloosa News, and the second was a letter from a former student and was written to Warren Hutton's wife. In a person's lifetime there are always those significant people who stamp indelible marks of enormous influence on us all. Warren Hutton was one of those significant people in the lives untold numbers.

Tribute #1:

UA organ professor remembered as one of best in nation

By Greg Retsinas
City Editor
July 2, 2002

J. Warren Hutton, who became one of the top organists in the country and then spent the rest of his life teaching others to love the instrument, died Monday in Philadelphia. The Tuscaloosa resident was there for a national convention of organists that starts today.

Hutton, 72, was the only person to teach the organ at the University of Alabama, joining the faculty in 1954 and retiring in 1996. He barely missed a step in retirement, continuing to teach for the past six years.

"Warren was like a Nobel Prize winner in his field. No one can replace him, but we’ll have to find someone to succeed him somehow," said Bruce Murray, chair of the UA music department, reached Monday at a summer music camp in North Carolina .

A room in the Frank Moody Music Building is already named for Hutton as is a scholarship given annually to a promising organ student. Twenty years ago, Hutton was awarded the Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award by the UA national alumni association.

During his tenure at UA, Hutton’s students won nearly every national organ competition, routinely sweeping contests in the Southeast. But he told friends and colleagues that his joy came not from watching students win, but from seeing them fall in love with a craft not always in the forefront of the music world.

"He was the finest organ teacher in the country. I wouldn’t be the player I am without him," said Jonathan Biggers, who studied with Hutton from 1978-84 and is now an acclaimed concert organist.

As a high school student, Biggers said he was considering three colleges when he visited Tuscaloosa and watched Hutton teach a master class on the organ. He was so taken by the professor that he canceled his plans to visit the two other schools and enrolled at Alabama.

"He knew how to draw the very best out of his students," said Biggers, who now teaches organ and serves as artist-in-residence at Binghamton University in New York .

An uncommon instrument, organs vary. The one at UA — "its magnum opus", Biggers said — is a 5,000-pipe Holtkamp organ that stands nearly three stories tall. Hutton designed the organ, one of many he has designed over the past decade as a design consultant.

Hutton once said he loved the organ for its "tonal beauty, flexibility and integrity."

In music circles, organs have made a revival in recent years, Murray said, to the point now where there is "tremendous demand for church organists" at major cities in the U.S. and Europe .

In what is perhaps a rare case of one man helping to influence an arts discipline, Hutton has designed many of the organs being built today, and his students are playing many of those organs.

J.F. Goossen, a composer and UA music colleague of Hutton’s for more than four decades, said the organist was a stern tutor and typically only taught the best and brightest students. They in turn were fiercely loyal.

"Those were the kind of students he attracted. He didn’t bother with anyone else. He was a very hard taskmaster, but his students ate it up," Goosen said.

Even with his teaching duties and consulting work, Hutton spent time playing the Holtkamp, inviting fellow organists traveling across the South to stop by and play as well. He appeared in several national recitals as well as a series on public broadcasting in the 1980s.

Hutton was the longtime organist and choir director at University Presbyterian Church of Tuscaloosa, a position he held until his death. He also continued to play UA’s Denny Chimes occasionally.

Hutton’s last public performance was in 1996 when he joined with 300 other organists at sites across the country in the so-called "World’s Largest Organ Recital" in celebration of the centennial of the American Guild of Organists.

The first notes of the simultaneous recital were the opening notes of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, perhaps the most famous organ piece ever written.

The Little Rock, Ark., native received degrees from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and Syracuse University.

He is survived by his wife Nancy and twin daughters Denise Hutton Yanaura and Laura Hutton.

Staff Writer Steve Reeves contributed to this report.

Tribute #2:

July 2, 2002

Dear Nancy Hutton,

I was notified this morning by my sister-in-law that Warren had died yesterday in Philadelphia. Many will mourn his passing. As I’ve gone about my activities today with a very heavy heart, I’ve reflected on the influence that Warren had upon me when I was a student of his from 1964 to 1970. Certainly, my training as an organist continues to reflect his monumental influence. I came as a very needy, very inexperienced musician. He crafted over the next six years an individual who became a confident musician. He gave me much more than great teaching on how to play the organ. His teaching style with its demanding questioning, probing analysis, ever-widening musical interests, and his insatiable proclivity toward practical musical jokes and humor is branded upon me and my own teaching style. How many times did I write him to thank him for all that he gave me? Just recently, in an e-mail to him that was mainly written to inquire about his health, I took the opportunity to thank him for all that he had given me while I was his student. He wrote me back to say how glad he was to hear from me and how much he still enjoyed teaching.

His knowledge of organ design is legendary. His concept and execution of “touch” as the expressive means of organ playing was a gold mine for students and professionals alike. I remember shortly after we moved to Michigan (29 years ago this May) when I wanted to do post graduate work at a couple of different universities here in Michigan and had to take the entrance exams. My music history knowledge via instruction from Fred Hyde, my theory knowledge garnered from Fred Goossen, and my organ playing and organ design knowledge gained me entrance to post graduate work without any problem. This was all due to the efforts of Warren and the other devoted music faculty at UA.

Warren has certainly left a legacy that few could ever reproduce.

Please accept our deepest sympathy for the loss that you must feel. Many grieve with you and will continue to uphold you in prayer. Nancy, I fondly remember being a part of a chain of students who would sit with Denise or Laura when they had hospital stays during their early life. I still remember that their birthday is May 14, 1959. Please give them our condolences.

I regret not being able to be at the funeral. We are visiting Alabama late this month and had planned to stop by for a visit with Warren at that time.

With deepest sympathy,

A Former Student