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Why are there so many buttons?

Started by KB7DQH, November 16, 2013, 03:45:05 PM

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KB7DQH

Quote 'Why are there so many buttons?'
By JAMES DRAPER
news1@kilgorenewsherald.com

NEWS HERALD photo by JAMES DRAPER NEWS HERALD photo by JAMES DRAPER Super Mario, edelweiss and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – the repertoire of this week's East Texas Pipe Organ Festival featured more than fugues, fanfares and fantasias.

In his third year performing for local and cross-country music aficionados, organist Brett Valliant once again offered a pop culture pastiche for pintsized pipe organ pupils this week, welcoming more than 300 Chandler Elementary School students to St. Luke's United Methodist Church Wednesday morning. While playing renditions of familiar tunes on the church's Opus 1175 (another Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ designed by festival honoree Roy Perry in 1952), Valliant and festival organ tuner Steve Emery also allowed the children a quick peek behind the curtain of the 'King of Instruments.'

Valliant's annual accompaniment of a select silent movie – this year, Cecil B. Demille's 'King of Kings' featured at First Presbyterian Church Wednesday night – has become the three-yearold festival's highest-attended event, but he found an equally eager crowd among the 14 classes of second graders earlier in the day.

Chandler Elementary School second grader Cade Henry takes a peak at the inner workings of St. Luke's United Methodist Church's pipe organ Wednesday morning. NEWS HERALD photos by JAMES DRAPER Chandler Elementary School second grader Cade Henry takes a peak at the inner workings of St. Luke's United Methodist Church's pipe organ Wednesday morning. NEWS HERALD photos by JAMES DRAPER With 2,000 plus pipes, "In this organ the longest pipe is 16-feet-long," Valliant told the wide-eyed, fidgety audience. "The smallest one is smaller than a pencil."

Dozens of tiny hands leapt into the air as soon as the Wichita, Kans.organist invited questions.

"Why are there so many buttons?"

The pre-sets make it easier for the organist to perform complex pieces, Valliant explained, rather than having to constantly adjust settings.

"Which pipes make the really low sound?"

The low sounds are the white wooden ones, the organist noted, while the tiny metal pipes make the high sounds.

"The very biggest pipes are sometimes the softest," Valliant said.

Expanding the organ festival's events into the classroom is important, he added later, opening a wider musical world to the children.

"I think that they gain an awareness," he explained. Maybe one child in 1,000 will pursue the piano or organ and "With so many kids who don't go to church anymore where these organs are, this is a means of introducing them to an instrument that's so stationary they have to come to it."

Certainly, Valliant mixed classical pieces into his pop melody program for the kids.

However, "It's all about trying to get it into something they may have heard elsewhere in their world."

In order to reach audiences unfamiliar with the beauty of the pipe organ, performers have to create a special draw. Hence, the silent movie, Valliant said: it appeals to movie fans and cult film connoisseurs as well as history buffs who want to experience a style of show that faded from marquees decades before they were born.

"I think everyone who shows up ends up being pleasantly surprised at how the organ just fades away, it becomes part of the film score," he insisted. "It's a perfect marriage between something visual and something auditory."

Primarily employed as a music director and organist at First United Methodist Church in Wichita, Valliant splits his time with freelance work in other venues like Kilgore's pipe organ festival.

For fellow festival feature performer Joby Bell of North Carolina, the local event is one of the best ideas he's seen in a while. In its first two years, the Kilgore organ celebration – brainchild of First Presbyterian Church organist and choirmaster Lorenz Maycher – has already reached national and international audiences.

"It's helping keeping the word out about these fine instruments in this part of the world and their history," Bell said. "And they sound wonderful."

The programming developed by Maycher, his committee of volunteers and their guest performers has been amazing, Valliant agreed, unsurprised this year's festival sold out its first block of local hotel rooms for registered guests.

"I think it's gained a following for being good quality and (for the) really outstanding instruments this area has to offer," he said, all the handiwork of Maycher's predecessor, Perry, spread throughout multiple cities. "Every year it's gained attendance as the momentum has built."

http://www.kilgorenewsherald.com/news/2013-11-16/Front_Page/Why_are_there_so_many_buttons.html

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Eric
KB7DQH
The objective is to reach human immortality—that is, to create things which are necessary to mankind, necessary to the purpose of the existence of mankind, and which have become the fruit that drives the creation of a higher state of mankind than ever existed before."