Featuring Dennis James,
(internationally renowned
touring musician.)
Also featuring, Stephanie Schmidt
(historical Keyboard Specialist)
Honoring Pauline Root as a member
of this church for 80 years
THE EVENT IS OPEN TO THE
ENTIRE COMMUNITY AS A
PERFORMANCE TO REMEMBER
Doors will open at 1:30 P.M.
There will be a free will offering
taken for the guest artists.
Holiday Organ Concert
Saturday, December 28, 2013
2:00 P.M.
Pauline Root
Dennis James
My family and I are so thrilled and happy that he chose Addison to live, and we want
everyone to hear him. This is such a wonderful way to share my 80th year anniversary
as a member of The First Presbyterian Church.”
James, who has resided in Addison since 2010, is known worldwide as an historic
music preservationist whose specialties have ranged from reviving Benjamin Franklin’s 1761 invention, the glass armonica, to preserving bygone performance styles
and forgotten repertoire from across the centuries. He has been a pivotal figure in
the revival of silent films accompanied as originally intended, with live performance
of actual surviving music from the early 20th Century. James has played along with
the historic films with piano, theatre pipe organ, chamber instrument ensembles on
up to full symphony orchestras throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico and overseas.
A long-time Addison resident, Root will celebrate her 90th birthday in January. She
has been a member of First Presbyterian’s congregation since she was 10 – longer than
anyone else. Indeed, that’s longer than most churches can claim of a member.
Root married the late William Russell Root on Dec. 26, 1941 in Addison. They had four
children: Connie, Cheri, Bill and Bruce (both sons are deceased). While she raised her
children, she achieved many successful career triumphs along the way. She owned the
Tasty Shop on Main Street in Addison for 17 years before selling it to her daughter Connie. After spending two years at home with her youngest child, who was a toddler at the
time, she then returned to work as the high school’s first payroll clerk.
In 1977, she became a sales representative for Mary Kay cosmetics, earning a pink
Buick Regal in 1980, her first pink Cadillac in 1981, and her second in 1983. She left
Mary Kay the following year when her husband became ill and, after he passed away,
she began the next chapter in her life as a real estate agent in Florida with her son Bruce.
Root, who was a licensed real estate agent in New York until 2012, also worked as an
executive distributor for Neways International for nearly 20 years. She currently is a
consultant with Modere, teaching clients how to stay young and healthy. She continues
to enjoy an active social life and plays golf frequently at the Pinnacle in Addison.
Active now primarily as a multi-instrumentalist, he concentrates on performances
with historical glass musical instruments and pioneering electronic instrument devices. James played his glass armonica this past summer at the famed Tanglewood
Music Festival together with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He also performed
recently at the prestigious Caramoor and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart music festivals in New York, in addition to European appearances in Vienna, Salzburg and
Cologne. He has been working intensely of late on the preservation and restoration
of the earliest electronic instruments, the 1919 Soviet Theremin and the 1928 French
Ondes Martenot, among his many other ongoing specialist musical activities. James
also serves as Lecturer in Glass Music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, New Jersey.