"Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing." (Psalm 100:1-2)

Serving the Streetsville and Meadowvale communities since 1836.

Phoenix Organ Installation Diary at Streetsville United

At a special congregational meeting held December 15, 2002 the congregation of Streetsville United Church approved the purchase and installation of a Phoenix PD-351 Digital Organ to replace its current Keates Pipe Organ with some components dating back to 1920. This diary will attempt to log the progress of the organ's construction and installation during the spring of 2003.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Two Organist Visits

This week we had visits from two of Canada's more highly recognized organists. In both cases they spent a few minutes exploring the organ, trying out some tunes and made some initial positive comments on the (tonal) quality of the music. Then I spent a few minutes showing the other features (as best a non-keyboard instrumentalist can) and how to change many of the parameters, including the overall voicing specification.

But then they spent the remainder of their visits taking up the challenge of how they could best express themselves musically using the many features of the organ. For instance, one ended up playing Bach's Air on a G string using the orchestral strings instrumentation, an instrumental flute stop and, for a bass, a Principal stop on the Pedal division. It was a stellar performance. Switching from the English to Baroque voicing, reviewing the use of memories to create unique stop combinations for the thumb and toe pistons, invoking the instrumentation stops and even the variation of parameters such as volume, reverberation level and temperament were amongst the many variables they tried out.

Both went away, not discussing whether it had a genuine pipe organ sound (that was a given from the first few minutes of playing), but rather how could they creatively express themselves in new ways through this instrument.
Posted 6/25/2003 11:34:00 p.m. by Jim Courtney