So how did I get into opera ... I grew up in Philadelphia and my parents had season tickets to the Philadelphia Orchestra. My father was a chemist, but he and my mother would have friends over and they would play chamber music. I heard classical music all my life, but my parents weren’t opera fans.

James David Christie, organ consultant for more than four years with the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, has been given the honor to play the 5,548-pipe Casavant Frères organ that graces Helzberg Hall. The concerts March 10 and 11 are sold out. Christie says the honor is humbling.