By day, Van Hoose lives the university life. But by night, weekends and whenever the Washington Nationals are in town, he’s behind a Kurzweil synthesizer filling Nationals Park with the traditional soundtrack of America’s ballparks: organ music.
How did you learn how to play the organ?
I’m a professional pianist and I teach at American University. I’ve played organ and piano since I was really little.
So what is it like? It must be different than playing a Mozart concerto before people sitting quietly, right?
It’s a blast. I’ve always been a fan of baseball. It’s a neat way to combine two things that I really love. We have fun with stuff, like when we have two strikes against an opposing hitter, coming up with something fun to play. I started off playing a “Jaws” theme, or use other things like “Carmina Burana,” “Phantom of the Opera” and stuff like that.
How do you watch the game?
Basically we’re sort of up in the media area, which is behind home plate, up a little bit. But it’s a perfect view of the field, which is actually important because we need to see what’s going on in certain situations to play something that fits the moment.
What are some of the current songs you’ve brought out?
I’ve been doing “I’ve Got a Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas and “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train as one of the recent ones.
When you have time off do you go to other teams’ games or are you baseballed out now?
It’s funny you ask because I was wondering if that was going to happen. It is fun when I have time off to go to games and be able to watch as a fan and also to hear what they do for music at other parks.
— Kytja Weir
