An organist on a cathedral instrument has at his command thousands of individual pipes, each one an instrument capable of beautiful music on its own or in concert with others.
For 50 years Honolulu was John Swan McCreary’s cathedral. Known especially for his years performing at St. Andrew’s Cathedral and on theater organs such as Hawaii Theatre’s massive console, he produced performances of beauty and grace as well as wit and whimsy and an unmatched musical virtuosity. An expert choirmaster, he also made musicians out of a host of local voices, big and small, trained and untrained alike.
McCreary, an organist, teacher, choir leader and composer, died March 30 at age 83. His friends and family sang his composition "Na Ke Akua ‘Oe e Kia‘i," a work frequently performed in local churches, during his final moments at the Queen’s Medical Center.
A service will be held at St. Andrew’s Cathedral at 11 a.m. April 27, with visitation at 10 a.m.
He leaves a legacy of thousands of musical performances in a broad variety of styles along with the many people he trained to perform and love music.
"He was at the cathedral, and when he first moved here, he was working with Honolulu Community Theatre (now Diamond Head Theatre), he was the director of the (Sons of Aloha) barbershop chorus; he also was the choirmaster at St. Andrew’s Priory School," said his daughter, Susan Duprey. "He did Hawaii Opera Chorus. He did Temple Emanu-El. He did all that."
McCreary was choral director at ‘Iolani School, teaching there from 1968 to 1996. Even after he retired from teaching, he stayed on as organist for the school’s chapel services and accompanied the choir, said John Alexander, a friend and colleague at ‘Iolani.
"He was a phenomenal organist," Alexander said. "He had given recitals at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and Cathedrale de Notre Dame in Paris and Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco."
More recently, McCreary filled in as a sabbatical replacement at the prestigious St. James’ Church in New York City, a position made even more prominent by the recent installation of a new organ, Alexander said. "He was simply the best organist on the island, even after he retired."
McCreary grew up in Indiana, Pa., and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in organ performance at the University of Michigan.
He was a newlywed, working at a small church in Washington, D.C., and studying with Paul Callaway, an organist known for helping to develop the classical music scene in the nation’s capital, when he learned of a job in Hawaii. It involved playing organ and directing the choir at Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew, the formal name for St. Andrew’s.
"He came to St. Andrew’s Cathedral and played one chord on the organ and said, ‘I could be here for a couple of years,’" Duprey said., "And of course, 50 years later they’re still in the same house."
Among McCreary’s most prominent skills was providing the soundtrack for silent movies. "Especially during the summer, on Friday nights, a lot of people remember him for the Friday-night performances he would do at the Waikiki Theater," Duprey said.
Though that movie house is long closed, he would continue the tradition at the Hawaii Theatre. McCreary served as "curator" of the theater’s organ, helping with its maintenance and upkeep while continuing to perform on it during special events such as Halloween. He would spend many hours preparing for such performances, composing melodic motifs to identify each character in the film — something tense and scary for Nosferatu or something heroic for Ben-Hur — then developing them into a large symphony of sound.
Over the years, McCreary would introduce some of the major sacred works, such as Bach’s "B Minor Mass," to local audiences, using choir groups of mixed and varying faith denominations accompanied by symphony musicians. "Works that take a massive amount of energy (to organize), he would perform, and that hadn’t been done before," Duprey said.
He was equally adept at making those works accessible to young musicians. "At ‘Iolani he had fourth-graders singing the Mozart ‘Requiem.’ He had fourth-graders singing the ‘Carmina Burana,’" Duprey said, referring to two advanced works in the choral repertoire. "He believed they could, and so he had them singing Mozart and Brahms and Carl Orff. … He had high expectations and people met them.
"He knew that in our small community we really have to rely on so many different elements of our community to keep what we’re doing going. We’ve got to support each other, and he understood that on all levels, from the theater scene to Hawaii Opera Theatre to the church music scene."
McCreary was also a prolific composer, especially when it came to setting music to sacred texts in Hawaiian. His duties at St. Andrew’s included directing its Hawaiian choir, which sings regularly at an 8 a.m. Sunday service.
"For them he wrote and arranged just volumes of music," Alexander said. "Some of his most beautiful music is in the Hawaiian language.
"We’d be at these really long faculty meetings, and he’d be just scribbling away, never a dull moment. He continued to write beautiful music right up until his death."
He was also known for his sense of humor, helping to relax singers in rehearsal, and would devise alliterative nicknames to help him remember their names.
"It was hilarious," Alexander said. "His students from decades and decades ago all remember their nicknames."
Duprey, who directs the Windward Choral Society in Kailua and the Kona Music Society on Hawaii island, said her father was a devoted family man, making sure every dinner was spent at home, in candlelight, "and then he would run off to another rehearsal."
McCreary is additionally survived by wife Betsy, son Kendall and two grandchildren.
Online condolences can be made at www.borthwickoahu.com.
