Abilene pianist and organist composes his life around helping others
Musician with hearing loss sees ability as gift
By Brian Bethel
July 21, 2011
In the blue-carpeted sanctuary of First Christian Church, Tim Adcock’s hands
fly deftly over the keyboard of the church’s piano, offering up crystalline
tones to the echo-laden hall.
Adcock, who was born with severe hearing problems, makes it look easy,
masterfully intermingling the majesty of traditional hymn “How Great Thou
Art” with selections from a piece by Rachmaninoff.
It’s something he does fairly regularly, Adcock said, combining classic
music with hymns in a way that transforms each into each, and it’s something
he does with skill and obvious delight.
Earlier, sitting in his tax preparation office on Butternut Street, he
explained that his mother thought learning to play the piano and the organ
would be “good ear training.”
“I think God gave me that gift because of the hearing loss,” he said of his
ability to play, noting that he “cannot function” without his hearing aids.
Even with them, he has to be looking at people to read their lips to catch
their total meaning, Adcock said.
But when it comes to music, with his hearing aids he can “hear every note”
except the final key on a traditional 88-key piano keyboard.
Adcock said he has never seen his lifelong condition as a disability but as
a “challenge.”
Growing up in Iowa Park, near Wichita Falls, he used to accompany his father
to church while his patriarch prepared to teach Sunday school classes.
He started banging on the piano at the church, he said, when he was 5 or 6
years old, displaying some potential even before he started formal lessons.
“And there was an adding machine in the church office, and I always like to
play on that,” he said. “So that’s where you kind of get the two things —
music and math.”
Adcock, 50, a graduate of Hardin-Simmons University, has an accounting
degree, though not a degree in music. But the accomplished way he rings out
notes and chords with practiced ease bespeaks years of training and
practice.
“I started playing piano for church when I was 14, and then gradually, by
the time I was in high school, moved over to the organ,” he said. “So I’ve
been playing organ for a church I guess about 33 years.”
Music, in certain respects, combines both of his passions into one, he said.
“On one aspect, math is a totally left-brained thing,” he said. “And in
music, some of it is left-brained, like when you count the number of beats.”
But the emotion and power of music transcends something beyond mere numbers,
he said, ideally blending together in a way to become something divine.
“I feel like I can reach people though this ministry,” he said.
The church’s pastor, Don Wilson, said Adcock brings in not only skill in
playing but faith, which flows through his music and through those who hear
it.
“It really lifts the congregation,” he said. “His math is one side of his
brain, his poetic expression is another, and I think his music just brings
them both together. And the fact that he’s so skilled on piano and organ
gives us so many options and gives the choir whatever options they’d like.”
Adcock came to Abilene to attend HSU in 1980, he said, playing at Calvary
Baptist Church and later Pioneer Drive Baptist Church.
“I even played at the (Episcopal Church of the) Heavenly Rest one summer
when their organist was on sabbatical,” he said.
In 2002, he came to First Christian Church with the idea of substituting
there for about six weeks.
“Nine years later, I’m still there,” he said. “People are just so nice and
friendly, and the type of music they do is just right up my alley.”
Adcock plays for the church’s 11 a.m. service, switching instruments as
required.
“There’s about four steps I have to take up to get to the piano” from the
church’s organ, he said. “During the service, I’m back and forth four or
five times every week.”
He loves the ability, he said, to switch instruments.
“I can express myself in multiple ways, with all different types of music,”
he said.
It’s not something he has ever considered a job, he said, instead seeing his
playing as a gift to God — and to those whose spiritual experiences he hopes
are enhanced, whether he’s playing a meditative piece for the church’s
invitation period or a rare but still popular “good old, Southern gospel
hymn.”
But it’s not his only contribution to the congregation.
Adcock’s office on Butternut streets deals primarily with income tax clients
— he has a few hundred, he said.
“I’ve been doing this kind of work for 28 years, and I’ve been here since
2003,” he said. “This is my bread and butter, this particular office.”
In 2008, Adcock got a chance to contribute his mathematical gifts to his
congregation when a transitional minister asked him to take over the
church’s accounting.
After the church secretary who had been responsible for keeping the books
left, “they actually created a position for me,” he said, and now,
maintaining the church’s finances is another part of how he chooses to
serve.
“I have my practice, which gives me my full-time income,” he said. “But I’m
so grateful to be able to use aspects of this in church finance.”
It is, he said, another ministry, and one that he enjoys immensely.
Jane Hurley, First Christian’s Christian education and evangelism
coordinator, praised Adcock’s aid.
“We all knew he had other talents when he came here, but when he started
helping with the finances, it was so helpful,” she said. “The finances had
been done in-house, and the person that was doing it had other jobs, so Tim
has been able to really help us keep a handle on the pulse of the giving and
the bills.”
Joe Mack Hill, the church’s choir director, was similarly full of praise for
both Adcock’s accounting acumen and his musical chops.
“I could not do my job if it weren’t for Tim,” he said. “He is very
talented, committed and flexible, and I’ve told my choir that we sing
anthems that other groups couldn’t sing because they wouldn’t have an
accompanist as accomplished as he is.”
Adcock’s skill in both reading music and improvisation make him a versatile
and important component of the choir’s musical success.
He also plays handbells, Hill said, and “doesn’t let his job description
limit what he does.”
“He makes the best of every situation,” Hill said, calling Adcock
“indispensable” whether it be playing a hymn or tabulating the church’s
coffers.
“He’s someone you can really rely on, someone you can really trust,” he
said. “And he’s become a good friend through the years.”
As for Adcock, he said he can’t imagine not sharing the joy he feels as his
hands move over the keys on a Sunday morning, or as
he helps to keep the church financially secure.
“I just know that’s what I’m supposed to be doing,” he said. “Those things
are my contribution to the Lord.”
Source:
http://www.reporternews.com/news/2011/jul/21/abilene-pianistorganistfinancial-wiz-composes/