Organs I've Played: St Stephen's, Durham

When I was in high school we lived in Durham, NC. By that point I was very interested in playing piano and organ. I was taking piano lessons with one teacher, but really wishing I could study organ too. She suggested I move on to another teacher for organ. I did and was hooked. By the time I graduated high school Duke Chapel had installed its Flentrop organ in the rear gallery. Also about that time St Stephen's Episcopal Church installed a smaller but no less impressive Flentrop in their west end gallery.

It was remarkable for its French classical inflection Dutch builder for an American congregation). By this point my organ instructor was Kathy Cain whose husband was on the faculty at Duke. Through Kathy I met husband Bob Parkins, and through him others in organ culture in Durham. Ultimately I was introduced to Joe Kitchen at St Stephen's. I managed to score an invite to play the Flentrop there. It's remarkable too for the placement of drawknobs above the keydesk, at the player's head.

When Eli was traveling back and forth to Durham for glaucoma treatment this year, I knew I wanted to get back to see the organ anew. These picture are from that cloudy day visit in October.I also saw Dr Kitchen, who had no idea who I was from 30 years ago or so. But I really enjoyed seeing the instrument, even if (to Eli's frustration) I didn't play a single note!

Organs I have played: Brevard

The Porter Center at Brevard College is a multi-use concert hall on the main campus. The front of the hall includes a small gallery holding Jaekel opus 43. At 69 ranks it's one of the largest instruments in this region of the state. I played the instrument as part of a hymn festival in 2013. We actually presented the hymn festival at Black Mountain Presbyterian, which our choir leading and then mounted the same production in Brevard, with the local choral society leading the singing a few weeks later. We had brass instrumentalists for both events. They were with me in the gallery for the Porter Center event. With them there was not much room for anything else! Logistics were a bit tricky, but we used closed-circuit monitors for me to see the conductor. The instrument was a delight to play. It fills the room well. I would like to get back down to Brevard soon to play it again at my leisure.

Organs I have played, part 1

Last Christmas my mom gave me a device to scan old slides into digital images. I have been plugging away with the few boxes of slides I have over the past few months. I have re-found some neat pictures of organs I have played. I thought I would start a series of posts on them.

In 1987 or 1988 I went with a small group of ministerial colleagues to Jamaica. This was back in the days when I was training for and seeking ordination in the United Methdist Church. This trip was put together for the participants to see the work being done by Methodists in Jamaica, and to see how we pastors might involve our congregations with that work, as mission endeavors. The idea was that we would get familiar with the work being done, identify needs and motivate our congregations to get involved. We spent a week or so on the north shore of Jamaica, between Montego Bay where we flew into and Ocho Rios the next larger town on the coast. I remember very few details, except that we were looking at construction work going on and the education program, specifically summer vacation Bible school, of the Methodist community in the area we were in. St Ann's Bay is a north shore town with a small circuit of Methodist congregations, the next to last image is the largest church in the circuit in St Ann's Bay, and it was this organ that I encountered. I didn't wind up with a picture of myself at the console, though I did play it. The last picture is one from a group from Kansas that has a pretty strong (it seems), on-going relationship with the Methodists in this area.

 

You can learn a bit about the Methodist Church in Jamaica here. And learn about Church of the Resurrection's work in Jamaica here. The organ was built by R. Spurden Rutt of London. According to sources he delivered about 20 instruments to Jamaica. The present instrument is not in the British Institute of Organ Studies' National Pipe Organ Register, but I did find this listing of Rutt's corporate history.

Seated one day at the organ

It wasn't actually me at the organ, but rather Eli. I had to fix a badly out-of-tune pipe today. And while I had the casework opened up, and since I was already dust-covered, I decided to touch up the tuning of the reed ranks.

I took care of the one note myself in the early afternoon. I used a pencil to hold the key down while I climbed up and fixed it. To do the reed touch-up, though, I decided to wait until Eli arrived at church off the school bus and let him hold keys for me.

All that went just fine. The reeds had suffered as we have been alternating between seasonably cool weather and bitterly cold spells. They sound much better now. As I was finishing up, Briggs asked to see inside the casework. I don't think he ever had before. Briggs was the perfect size to maneuver around the casework; I just wish he could handle the tuning! Then it was Eli's turn, though it was not his first peek at the ranks of pipes.

As we were finishing, a choir member showed up, and she and I sat down to chit-chat. Briggs ran off to find a basketball. Eli sat on the organ bench and experimented. I wasn't listening too closely as he drew one stop and another to hear the highs and lows and so forth. But as a few minutes passed I realized he was picking out the tune New Britain (Amazing Grace). I kept my focus on my conversation, but eventually had to pause because Eli was playing the melody on the pedals! My chorister had noticed the same thing at about the same time. Eli had pretty much figured out the basic melody and was beginning to add the grace notes too, mostly in rhythm.

His pedal technique was awful but I was struck by the fact that he deliberately chose to create the melody using his feet instead of using a manual. I demonstrated a soft, sustained chord for his left hand to accompany the melody and let him play the whole thing again. It sounded pretty good to me and to the singer!

Today Eli's band was doing its goodwill concert tour around the local elementary schools. It seems at least one choral group was also in the mix (maybe they were singing at the mall where the band had lunch), because he says that was how the New Britain melody had gotten in his ear: a group sang it today.

Who knows what this little experience may lead to, if anything. But it certainly was a nice "aha" moment in the midst of an otherwise ho-hum day.

Organs

As one might expect, with three kids under foot, international travel is pretty much out of the question for me for any number of reasons. So I have to travel vicariously through family and friends. Jane C. from choir was in Spain over Holy Week. Mindful of her home-bound choir director, she took a picture of this instrument. She thinks it's Barcelona, but can't quite remember. (Anyone know for sure?) Jane didn't hear anyone play this organ and was appropriately bummed about that. Thanks Jane for the photo, and also the post card with the pretty stamp!

PipeScreams

I gave a short concert on Wednesday evening for the kids in our Logos program and as part of our on-going Thursday Night Live fellowship series (I know: Wednesday/Thursday; just go with it). I had done three PipeScreams concerts in Ashland and they were very popular (they even led to spin-offs for July 4th). This being the first here, we kept it short and simple. One of my piano students, Nick M. played a piece from his lesson book. He did great! We had about 125 in attendance, including many in costume. Eli turned pages for me and worked the lights (killed the house lights at the beginning, and turned on the works lighting for the kiddie talk). It was his first time and he did awesome; I was very proud of him. Things look good for PipeScreams II next year!