But this time, my attenton was called to a guest who wanted to speak with me. A former organist, he mentioned that he enjoyed the service, saide wonderful things about the choir, even threw a compliment my way. I knew he was and organ buff when he added "with what I had to work with." We were all accumstomed to the Gabriel Kney tracker organ and its foibles. But we also enjoyed the tracker feel, as well as the wonderful flute stops. The gang took John Robson to luch after church, one even drove him to the train station. He lived in Kingston at the time. He was in town to pay belated respects to an old time friend in the area. John grew up in Sandwich United Church, our old name, until age 12, when he left with his family. This was his first visit back. He became a long time organist and choir director in Kingston.
Fast forward to March 2010. John calls on the phone. Says he enjoyed the service, but we really need another organ. I say it is all we can do to keep the lights on. He says to let him worry about that. (!)
It turns out there is a lovely little organ stranded in an evangelical church in Sarnia that was a former United church. He has been talking to Dodington and Dodington, the area Casavant rep, about moving it. The plan was to move it to Windsor in three possible ways:- a simple overhaul, no changes
- a combination of some of our current organ's resourse
- adding a midi capability
Well, John and Ross Dodington bounced the ball back and forth several times, each time adding functionality. By the time I was again contacted, the prject ballooned into a mega project costing over $200,000. I never was a fan of unit organs. These organs used extended ranks to fake extra stops. That Sarnia organ had only 7 ranks, yet there were 25 stops on the console. A rank normally has 61 notes, one for each note on the keyboard. But a unit organ will derive a 4 foot, 2 foot, even 2 2/3 foot stop from that same rank. It sounds veryefficient, and it is, but organ pipe voicers labour for hours and days to match an eight foot stop so that it has a nice balance within itself. Then a four foot stop is balanced to sound well with it, what is called an ensemble sound. And this continues for all the other stops. When you do this with a single rank, this level of blend is not possible. Unit organs just don't sound that good.
Ross heard my concerns, and decided to un-unitize the organ and add the missing stops with Walker Technologies digital voices. Bob Walker has sampled the best stops in the best organs of the world, couple those huge pipe for pipe samples with true state of the art amplification technology to give us an organ with over 50 stops. We also received three bonuses: a wonderful Deagon chimes unit from a Chalmers United Church in Woodstock, two facade string stops from the same church, from a rear antiphonal division, originally installed by the Woodstock Pipe Organ Company, (John likes strings) and a five stop positiv division, originally installed by Gabriel Kney, that is now mounted above the rear doors of the church.
Our positiv divsion has an interesting history. In the 1950s, Dr. Allen Webb served as a physician and organist in Woodstock. He lived in a large house, then built a new home next door. Gabriel Kney moved the instrument into the music room in the new house and added what is now our positiv division. A three manual console was made by the Principal Pipe Organ Company in 1962. The organ was enjoyed for many years. Healy Willan, among other notable organists, played it.
In 1984, Dr. Webb, having suffered many strokes, donated the organ to Chalmers United Church in Woodstock. The positiv division was installed on the balcony, along with its three manual console. Afew years ago, the church closed. The chruch people wanted the positiv to go to a good home. We were the forntunate benefactors. The console did not come with it, but it is controlled by the main console as a floating division, playable from either Swell, Great or Pedal.
Sound production note: an organ pipe creates sound far differently than a loudspeaker. In short, the loudspeaker has a hard time sounding exactly like the original. But Walker uses MANY speakers, seemingly randomly located within and without the organ chamber, to duplicate the sound very closely. In fact, organ recitalists were fooled with the game, which stop is real.
We also have a solid state MIDI action. What this means is we can play the organ from midi files. The organ can play itself, like a player piano. It can also be controlled remotely by an external MIDI keyboard. This was done during the dedication concert. An Albeniz flamenco piano (transcribed to guitar) piece was re-arranged for flamenco guitar and organ. It was played by flamenco guitarist Mkie Gemus and myself. I played the organ via a midi keyboard on the dais of the church near the guitarist. The keyboard was divided into 2 channels which allowed two distinct resgistrations to be used: flute and sting chorus, and solo oboe.
The organ is a delight. It is capable of performing all types of organ music, including thetare organ, a favourite of John's. Here is a sample of the organ playing The Simpsons Theme. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=h54ptoR9ZhY
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