On March 29, James Welch, organist of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Palo Alto, California, presented the inaugural recital on the newly acquired Schoenstein organ, which was installed in the small chapel of St. Mark’s. (The organ in the main church is a 4-manual Casavant organ built in 1958.) The new organ, Schoenstein’s Opus 97, was custom built in 1984 for the residence of Dr. and Mrs. Robert Malone of Santa Paula, California. The Malones relocated to Healdsburg in Northern California 1990, and installed the organ in their new home; when Mrs. Malone decided to sell the organ, the Kennedy family of St. Mark’s stepped forward with a donation to purchase the organ as a memorial for their mother, a long-time parishioner at St. Mark’s. Schoenstein reinstalled the instrument in the chapel, where it received its third—and probably final—dedication concert.
The two-manual organ features a drawknob console and fits the chapel perfectly, both in size and design. The organ consists of three ranks of pipes: Principal, Open Flute, and Stopped Flute, with a total of 192 pipes. Welch’s program included music of Bach, Buxtehude, Haydn, Vaughan Williams, Purvis, Rutter, Wilbur Held, Dale Wood, Richard Elliott, Andrew Unsworth, and Widor.
Present at the recital were members of the Malone, Kennedy, and Schoenstein families, as well as Jack Bethards, president of Schoenstein & Co.
The photo shows Jack Bethards, Mae Malone, Maureen Kennedy, David Kennedy, and James Welch.
