Redundant pipe instrument replaces toast toaster...

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http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120404/ZONE04/304040048/St-Thomas-Episcopal-Church-plans-organ-place-Sunday?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7C%7Cp

Written by
Martha Elson



St. Thomas organ dedication

What: St. Thomas Episcopal Church organ dedication concert by organist Bruce Neswick
When: 4 p.m. May 20
Where: St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 9616 Westport Road
Admission: Free and open to the public



St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Westport Road plans to celebrate not only the biblical resurrection story on Easter Sunday, but also a musical resurrection.

About 20 years after St. Thomas organist Robert Williamson first played the Wicks pipe organ at the old St. John's Episcopal Church on Preston Highway, he and St. Thomas are bringing that organ to St. Thomas — where Williamson will be reunited with it.

"I never thought I would play that organ again," Williamson said last week at St. Thomas, 9616 Westport, next to Zachary Taylor Elementary School. "It will really sound wonderful in here."

The declining St. John's congregation had merged with another Episcopal church on Southern Parkway, which was renamed Resurrection Episcopal Church, and the St. John organ had sat unused in the St. John building for about 10 years before it was sold to a new congregation a few years ago.

That congregation needed more space and didn't want to use the organ for its style of worship, Williamson said.

The Colonial-style St. Thomas church, which was built in 1968, bought the old St. John organ upon Williamson's recommendation and put it storage for about three years.

It has been reconditioned and upgraded to add new sounds and other features and is being installed at St. Thomas by Webber and Bourne Organ Builders in Germantown.

Pete Webber and Alexander Smith from Webber and Bourne were putting in wooden pipes last week in a new, enclosed chamber that has been built in the back corner of the church, where the choir performs. The organ console with the keyboards will sit in front of the structure.

Having the new organ will be a boost to St. Thomas, which operates a preschool and has a Sunday attendance of about 95, said the Rev. Anne Vouga, the church's pastor.

"We wanted to grow and have some good music," Vouga said.

Williamson said he is praying that enough of the organ will be in place by Sunday that he'll be able to play it for the Easter service. If so, "I'd be happy," he said.

He plans to rechristen it with J. Christopher Pardini's "Toccata on Amazing Grace" and the "Processional" movement from Dan Locklear's "Phoenix Fanfare and Processional," plus the standard Easter anthem "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.

Easter Sunday will be an especially big day for the church, because Vouga and 27 members also will embark after the service on a spring break trip to Mobile, Ala., to build houses for Habitat for Humanity.

A formal dedication event for the organ is planned May 20, featuring organist Bruce Neswick, associate organist at St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church on Wolf Pen Branch Road. Neswick also teaches organ at Indiana University and was organist and choirmaster at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City.

When Williamson came to St. Thomas four to five years ago, the church had an electronic organ, which is considered far less desirable than a pipe organ by organists and other music aficionados.

"When you're in a room with a pipe organ, you can feel the sound, you can feel the energy," Willamson said.

A pipe organ has a "real, pure sound," compared to the "fabricated sound" of an electronic organ, he said.

When the electronic organ at St. Thomas met its demise within a couple of years ("Thank you, Jesus," Williamson said), a friend loaned the church a small, self-contained Wicks pipe organ. The church recently has been using its piano for services, while the larger Wicks organ from St. John's is being installed.

The St. John's organ originally was at Hope Moravian Church in Hope, Ind., so it will be in its "third incarnation" at St. Thomas, Webber said.

The organ reconditioning and installation project is being paid for by an anonymous donor at St. Thomas.

Vouga didn't want to give the cost of the project, but she and Williamson said it is considerably less than the cost to buy a new organ of that size, which Webber said would be $150,000 to $200,000.

Williamson considers reusing the St. John organ to be a recycling project. "It's really wonderful ... to see that organ not go by the wayside," he said.

Eric
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