Music mentor Kempf has played at Zion Lutheran for 50 years - Washington Times

ABERDEEN, S.D. (AP) - It’s Jan. 28 and rich, breathy tones fill Zion Lutheran Church’s sanctuary, spilling over into every other office and room.

Sonya Kempf dons her newest pair of organ shoes, setting aside her red boots and scooching up to the church’s organ, just as she has since Dec. 10, 1969. It was here that she earned her first paycheck as a musician.

Kempf’s feet and fingers push air through the organ’s mechanisms - that means three rows of piano-like keys and a bit of a soft-shoe routine on the pedals, which work just like the keys. She’s continued performing at regular services, funerals, weddings and other church events for more than 50 years now. She’ll be celebrated at an open house Feb. 15 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the church.

“It’s addicting once you get used to (an) organ like that,” Kempf told the Aberdeen American News.

She’s less confident of her piano playing but that’s a likely exaggeration of imperceptible flaws to the appreciative listener. She piles accolades on her 30-plus year partner in music at the church, Sue Gates. Gates is a piano phenom, as Kempf describes her, and a very dear friend.

Kempf grew up in Leola and was very active in church. She took to the organ organically, somewhere around the sixth grade, first teaching herself, then getting guidance from her mother and a couple aunts who played. Pretty much every girl in her family wound on those keys and pedals, breathing life into a musical machine with origins dating back to the 3rd century.

She furthered her music education at Northern State University. And then began teaching piano and organ. In the prime of her career she was teaching upwards of 75 lessons a week, and mornings generally got going around 6:30 a.m. It would be a couple decades before she’d get to eat dinner with her husband at a reasonable time again. She eventually backed off lessons and began her Kindermusik program. It focuses on getting kids and their parents involved in the communication of music and sound.

“I like the younger kids - soft, cuddly, squishy kids absorbing everything,” she said, finishing with, “They aren’t mouthy yet.”

That continued until about 2017 when she sold Kindermusik to one of her former pupils, Emily Sternhagen.

If you’ve never met Kempf, it’s likely you’ve heard her. Aberdeen is a small community with just a few organists. That means Kempf has coaxed music from most of the city’s organs, filling in for others here and there through the years. There’s only one organ she knows of that she hasn’t played.

“At Presentation Convent, the pipe organ they have. I’ve never played that one little organ,” she said.

Her cheerful demeanor brightens even more at a recollected surprise - for a long time she didn’t know it existed. She still finds her expertise challenged every now and then. Her most intense piece was just a few weeks ago. She had to fill in for a funeral at Bethlehem Lutheran Church and a seemingly standard piece - “On Eagle’s Wings” - had been selected.

“Barb Papke was singing ‘On Eagle’s Wings,’ and she gives me this piece with five flats - D-flat key. I was, like, blown away. It had a lot of accidentals. It was 1:15 (p.m.), the funeral was at 2. I kept thinking, ‘OK, I’m going to pray a lot, just try to think of chords and stuff. All of the sudden I remember, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m in front of all the people here, too.’”

Kempf pulled it off, playing a little softer and asking the singer to keep it slow.

“I don’t remember any of it. I’ve never been so freaked out. I said, ‘This baby is not easy,’” Kempf said.

If the memory of playing isn’t there, the adrenaline rush is still crystal clear. She’d rather keep her challenges to adding more classical pieces to her repertoire, furthering her skills on the piano and polishing the piano/organ duets she and Gates perform, much to parishioners’ delight.

Through the years Kempf has come to the conclusion that her soft spots are for hymns and little kids. She loves the tradition of hymns, especially ones the congregation is familiar with. Then she gets to flex her talents and improvise a bit, pulling buttons, switching octaves or pitch and chord. Every fifth Sunday in a month - when they happen - the congregants get to pick the hymns.

As for children, an extension of their openness is also getting to know their parents and seeing them develop new ways to connect with their progeny.

At 3:15 p.m., like clockwork, Kempf’s granddaughters Zoe, 12, and Ella, 10, arrive after school. It’s Kempf’s turn to pass along her family’s quintessential mothers’ skill. The girls find their organ shoes - pulling them on over mismatched socks. Grandma chuckles and they set about a lesson.

Each time Kempf says she’s cut back, she mentions another student, another project, another service. Each is mentioned with a sincere delight. The seven organists she’s trained performed a concert at Zion Lutheran in January. Some traveled from as far as Pierre and Onaka. They were there to celebrate their benefits through the Esther Schumacher Scholarship Program for Organists. The fund was established in February 2005 after the Long Lake resident’s death. Schumacher is one of the aunts who taught Kempf, and she gets to teach those beneficiaries about one of her first mentors - the musician’s path, come full circle.

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