Digital Renaissance: How James Flores is Mapping Australia’s Organ Heritage
Welcome to Classically Minded!
I’m Garrett John Law, curator, and today I am thrilled to introduce James Flores.
James is an Australian organist who has been posting on YouTube for over 6 years now. I subscribed to his channel I was drawn to his approachable personality and refined performances.
In September of 2023, I finally had the privilege of meeting the man, the myth, and the legend in person!
James lives in Albury, and I live in Los Angeles. Our cities are approximately 7,784 miles (12527.13 km) away, so I couldn’t believe it when James announced his recital at St. Francis Desales Church in Sherman Oaks, California. That’s 0.5 miles away from my house!
Over the years, James has gained a devoted following centered around his music-making. But I was drawn to a side of him that much of his audience probably doesn’t know about…
James is also an accomplished software engineer and has used his skills to create unique and impactful projects. I especially want to highlight his interactive database of Australian organs. Let’s get started!
Australian Organs, your digital catalog project, aims to promote the history of organs across Australia. What inspired you to undertake this initiative, and what impact do you hope it will have on the appreciation of organ music in Australia?
We have several websites documenting the organs of Australia and the primary one is the OHTA (Organ Historical Trust of Australia). I do have some involvement with their existing website but not their catalogue. The current catalogue has been built over many years using static html using Dreamweaver (what you'd call a WYSIWYG editor back in the early 2000's). Although everything has been ordered and sectioned alphabetically and by state/city, there's currently no way to do full-text searches on all the data.
Given my background in IT, I decided to structure this data by scraping all the webpages, using AI to extract relevant information and structuring them in a database. This also allowed me to obtain the coordinates for each organ using the Google Maps API. Of course, given the sheer amount of data and varying levels of information, some information needs cleaning up. This is where, eventually, my Australian Organ's website will rely on the community to contribute up-to-date information. I also think it's pretty cool to finally have a map with pins on it showing all the organs of Australia.
Congratulations on successfully launching this interactive project documenting Australian organs! As a fellow software engineer, I can appreciate the hours spent building this out. I’ve spent some time searching your site. It is intuitive and visually appealing.
I encourage our readers to try it out using this link: australianorgans.com.au.
As an accomplished organist and software engineer, how do you balance your dual passions for music and technology, and do you find any intersections between the two in your work?
I'm still trying to figure this one out! At school, I think I always wanted a career in music, but somewhere down the line computers were all the craze in the early 2000s. I had a technical mind and I wanted to understand how things worked. Eventually, I decided to go down that route and I enjoyed my time at uni, made some good friends, and even did an exchange semester at the University of Colorado at Boulder! (2007).
It still amazes me that I did not even touch an organ until about 2011. Let's say that one career paid the bills and the other career created the bills! I don't know how to explain how I find time to do everything, but what I do know is that anything important to you, you will manage to find the time to do it. What I've learnt over the years is to not spread yourself thin, focus on things that are actually important to you.
In terms of intersections between music and technology, that it a moving target. As I explained earlier, my Australian Organs project is one of them and I'm always trying to think of ways to combine my interests together into a project. Building something that you're interested in is more likely to get completed.
Your GitHub projects showcase a diverse range of interests, from music-related applications to web development. Can you share with us how your background in music influences your approach to software engineering? Could you share some insights into your creative process when developing projects like TopMusicScores or Bookmarks-AI?
I actually took a really big break before getting back into web development. I spent a lot of my earlier IT career in Systems Administration and Help Desk, the latter isn't something that any graduate wants to stay long in. I was really fascinated in in hardware and virtualisation which comprised of using VMware to create highly available systems. On-premise infrastructure started to decline when cloud made its way through. I'm glad I jumped on the bandwagon and dived head first into AWS (Amazon Web Services). Fast forward a decade and I've had just over that much experience in AWS and have loved the growth and flexibility of building systems in the cloud.
The reason for getting back into web development was to use my skills and reach the general population, rather than just serving a corporation. As you might already know, my wife and I collaborate together on websites but I wanted to build a web app. Over the past year, I took two CS50 courses which I thoroughly enjoyed and this inspired me to continue on by creating little projects to gain more experience.
I guess being a musician, practising and learning, you understand that Rome wasn't built in a day. So I am quite content with making small steps and small progress. So when you look at TopMusicScores and Bookmarks-AI, they are little ideas I had to see how I could build out something without investing too much time in a huge project. I don't know what I want to build yet, but I do know that I want to create something that solves a problem and is a product that people talk about (not too much humility there!).
For those unfamiliar with Github, it is a combination of social media and a file management system, but for coding. In short, it’s a decentralized version control system that allows for open-sourcing projects and community collaboration. You can visit James’ GitHub Profile using this link: github.com/jamesflores.
James, I had the pleasure of attending your recital at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church (SFDS) in Sherman Oaks, California, just a few blocks from my house. It was a remarkable experience to finally see you perform live after following your journey on YouTube and Instagram for several years. Could you share with us how this concert came about and your experience traveling to the USA for the performance?
I'm so grateful that you came! It was unreal to see you in person! The recital came about because I wanted to visit the US again and also perform somewhere there. Having my YouTube channel has put me in contact with the most wonderful people across the world, and that included Mr Steve Park, the organist at SFDS. I reached out to him to see if he could help me organise something and it was literally just as simple as that! SFDS and Mr Park were extremely hospitable and I'm looking forward to coming back again soon. Coincidentally, a friend from my town also was going to be in the US at the same time, so we organised dates to line everything up and spent a week in LA doing all the touristy things.
It was a fabulous concert, you played a unique program with sensitivity, nuance, and bombast where required! I enjoyed finally meeting you in person, I’ll let you know if I’m ever in the Albury area. For those who are interested, the recital was recorded and can be viewed on James’ YouTube Channel.
James, your journey in music began with piano lessons at a very young age. How did this early exposure to music shape your passion for the organ and sacred music later in life?
I'm very grateful to my aunt, Aurora Flores, who taught me the piano from a very early age and continued all the way until after university. She was a teacher who wanted the best and always encouraged me to do better. This hunger continued and one day at church I heard the organ being played magnificently (not just 'hymns'). It was a piece by Clerambeault, the Caprice sur les grand jeux. Coming from a Catholic background in country Australia, we aren't exposed to the choral traditions which you'd experience in other "high church" Christian denominations. Not to say Catholic music is not good music, it's just that the majority of music outside the big cathedrals are quite uninspiring. This encouraged me to take up the organ in my early 20s and put my musical abilities to use every single week. I felt that being an organist presented more opportunities to use my talents to serve others, most especially, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Your involvement in church music ministry spans several parishes in the Albury area. How do you approach the unique challenges and rewards of contributing to liturgical music, and how does it complement your work as a recitalist and organist?
Honestly, I think there are more challenges than rewards in contributing to liturgical music. This might not be the case everywhere, but this is just my own personal experience. Especially coming from a country area, the pool of musicians to chose from are few and far. Over the years I've seen choirs and cantors come and go. The culture of singing, especially in the Catholic church, is quite limited too. I attended Mass at SFDS and I was very happy to see such a large congregation, friendly people and clergy and singing with gusto. I do see it as important for me to serve as organist at my parish but it has come with many challenges. Fortunately, my work as a recitalist and content creator have provided just enough motivation to keep going (for now).
As a content creator with a significant following on platforms like YouTube and Spotify, what role do you see digital platforms playing in the promotion and preservation of classical music in the modern age?
This one varies depending on who you ask. I know many organist friends who don't use their social media to share their work. It's hard to gauge whether it's due to only presenting full scale, highly polished performances or perhaps it's fear of criticism. I also know that many musicians aren't really well equipped to be able to record and edit videos themselves in an acceptable manner.
Can you believe that some university degrees don't even have subjects detailing this area of music? I think it should be absolutely compulsory to have modules on audio recording, video editing, and social media marketing. It's definitely the future right now for musicians making it into a career. YouTube and Spotify are the big players for long-form content and this can be repurposed into short-form content for Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
I must confess that I have left my Facebook and Instagram channels pretty quiet but I'm very active on YouTube. It's hard to be across everything all the time unless you have a team behind you. I'd say it's essential to have YouTube, Facebook and Instagram at the bare minimum to reach the masses.
I 100% agree that there are massive gaps in traditional music education programs. Marketing, production, and general entrepreneurship skills are more important than ever. That is a huge part of why I started this blog.
Here’s one of James’ recent videos featuring the Sydney Opera House organ. Enjoy!
With over 100k streams on Spotify alone, your music has reached a wide audience. How do you navigate the digital landscape as an independent musician, and what strategies have you found most effective in building and engaging with your fan base?
As far as I know, there's not really much engagement on Spotify. You are really relying on fans to click through your social channels and engage with you via email or other social media. Spotify is a tough one to crack for classical music as the platform really wasn't designed for it in mind.
The most effective way to engage and build a fan base is to respect your listeners and reply to comments. It doesn't take much time to thank people for leaving something thoughtful on posts and videos. If I didn't reply to anything, I wouldn't have made the connections I've made today—including yourself!
Looking ahead, what are some of your goals and aspirations, both in your music career and in your endeavors as a software engineer? How do you envision combining your passions to create meaningful contributions to both fields?
In terms of music, I want to reach a much larger audience on YouTube through views and subscribers. It's tough out there, but I'm consistent so I'm hoping that one day my work will finally pay off. In tech, I want to create a SaaS product (Software as a Service) which can generate income and pay for itself. This will give me more freedom to travel and share my music across the world.
In closing, I’d like to extend my gratitude to James for sharing his insights, inspirations, and passion for music with us.
Stay connected with him on YouTube!
Thank you for joining us on this extraordinary musical adventure. Until next time, let the music guide your soul and ignite your imagination.
Kindly,
Garrett John Law
Curator, Classically Minded
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