PCM: You have four cd’s out?

CR: Well two are my cd’s, two are compilations.

I will be doing a cd signing after my show at the Kimmel Center.

PCM: Do you manage yourself?

CR: I manage myself.

PCM: Do you find it to be difficult?

CR: Occasionally I find it difficult but I find in negotiations I fight for what I need and it works extremely well. I’m not the type that wants to have 100 recitals a year. There's more to life and I don’t want to live out of a suite case.

CR: Absolutely! I’m coming in Monday the concert is Saturday. I’m going to be working out a lot. Every organ is different and you want to learn the personality of the instrument. It’s like you have a palate of color before you and you need to mix them and know how they mix with each other. That takes a while to get to know how to mix the colors. Plus the dimension, the measurements are different on every organ. The pedals might be farther away the keyboard might be higher or lower.  They fit and you get the most graceful fingering for your body. That’s when it is locked in. I get so excited.

PCM: You’re premiering the organ in in the first organ series at the Kimmel center.

CR: I am so excited, I can’t tell you. I designed the most challenging program I will probably will have ever played until now. I decided that I am just going for it. I am so excited about this new instrument in Philly. I’m so excited to be coming back. I was the second person to publicly play the new organ when I was Seventeen at the Academy of Music with the Philadelphia Orchestra and now in the same lifetime I get to play in their new venue on a new instrument and one of the first. How many people get to do that? It is such a privilege. I wore my grandmothers ring when I was seventeen at the Academy of Music and I will be wearing that ring on Saturday at the Kimmel Center. It’s a sentimental thing.

PCM: Do you get to connect with your audience when you are playing in balconies?

CR: I love to connect with the audience. If I am in a balcony it isdifficult to connect because I am removed. That's why at Kimmel I’m playing on a stage. I want to be with the audience that's part if it for me.

(Cherry has shared the program notes she has written with PCM and has given us permission to put them on the site. They can be viewed on the Features page.)