Wedding bells toll for civic organist
 
Where is ceremony? Pavilion, naturally
By Jeanette Steele
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

October 11, 2007

BALBOA PARK – Every Sunday, civic organist Carol Williams gives a public performance at Balboa Park's Spreckels pavilion. There's Bach, there's Brahms, there's Rachmaninoff.

NADIA BOROWSKI SCOTT / Union-Tribune
Balboa Park organist Carol Williams won't have to leave her work place to marry Kerry Bell next week, when the couple will wed in Spreckels pavilion.  
But Williams never dreamed the Balboa Park organ would play the wedding march for her.

The organist will be married at the pavilion this month – and not in a small, quiet ceremony. It will be a public extravaganza.

Three former civic organists will perform at the Oct. 20 ceremony and give an hour-long public concert prior to the wedding. Organ curator Lyle Blackinton will walk Williams down the aisle.

“It's a happy place for us. The organ is like a family member,” said Williams, the city's official organist since 2001. “It's meant a lot to us because I met him here.”

Pay attention, men. Here's how to woo a woman who is an international musician and something of a local celebrity.

Kerry Bell stumbled across the Sunday performances and got hooked. By the music, maybe. By the performer, um, yeah.
Bell eventually stayed after a show and invented a question for Williams. Then he asked her to dinner. Williams was wary, never thinking she'd date anyone from the sometimes 2,500-strong audience. Finally, she agreed to meet for tea at the nearby Japanese Friendship Garden.

“I didn't say no because I thought you were cute,” Williams recalled, adding the couple laughs about it now.

Bell took a lot of ribbing from men in the dedicated cadre of Williams' fans when the organist announced their engagement onstage at a February concert.

“People said, You've taken away our hope,' ” Bell said. A British native, Williams brought glamour to the organist job. She often performs in elegant gowns, playing up her eye-catching looks. Besides presiding over the Sunday free concerts and a summertime evening series, she tours the world giving shows.

Bell is musical, too. He traveled around Europe as a drummer with bands in the 1980s. These days, he runs his own videography company.

At home in San Diego, the couple jam together, he on a drum kit, she on a keyboard playing jazz. Bell and Williams also are working on a video series in which they visit famous organs around the world. Both have been married before.

Williams was charmed by Bell's straightforward style. “He is incredibly sincere and says what he means,” she said. “You don't often meet someone like that.”
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 The wedding concert will be at 1 p.m. Oct. 20, and the ceremony at 2 p.m. at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. The public is invited.
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 Jeanette Steele: (619) 293-1030; jen.steele@uniontrib.com
 
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