Aeolus announces a new organ recording, Olivier Messiaen: La Nativité du Seigneur (AE11401, SACD), recorded on the unaltered 1880 Cavaillé-Coll organ of Église Saint-François de Sales, Lyon, France, featuring Mark Steinbach, Brown University organist and distinguished senior lecturer in music.
Jean-Philippe Rameau Auditorium at the Regional Conservatory in Saint-Maur
On January 26, four French organists performed a concert to inaugurate Yves Fossaert’s recent renovation of the Danion-Gonzalez concert organ (1974–1975) in the Jean-Philippe Rameau Auditorium at the Regional Conservatory in Saint-Maur, an eastern suburb of Paris, France.
The concert rendered homage to Gaston Litaize (1909–1991), who founded the organ class there in 1974, and Pierre Pincemaille, who taught improvisation from 2000 to 2017.
Holtkamp Organ Company, Cleveland, Ohio; Central Christian Church, Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington sits at the heart of the Bluegrass country of Kentucky. It has many claims to fame. It is the “Horse Capital of the World,” hands down, with hundreds of horse farms throughout the region. It is adjacent to Bourbon County, Kentucky, and home to fourteen bourbon distilleries. It is also home to what is arguably the “Mother Church” of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), namely Central Christian Church.
On September 22–23, 2023, the high school division competition of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival Hartford (ASOFH) returned to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, for the first time since 2018. This biennial competition was canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic and was held virtually in 2021.
In the 1980 movie, Honeysuckle Rose, Willie Nelson played Buck Bonham, a country music singer looking for national fame. His life as a traveling music star is a strain on his marriage to Viv, played by Dyan Cannon; one thing leads to another, and not everyone winds up happy. The best thing that came out of that movie is the song, “On the Road Again,” which won a Grammy Award for Best Country Song and an American Music Award for Favorite Country Single.
The Klais organ was installed in 1977.
C. B. Fisk, Inc., has completed a comprehensive restoration of the Johannes Klais Orgelbau organ at Saint Peter’s Church, New York City.
March 22, 7:00 p.m., Merrill Auditorium, Portland, Maine
James Kennerley, municipal organist of Portland, Maine, will present a concert on March 22, 7:00 p.m., to celebrate the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach. The event will feature the Kotzschmar Organ, Austin Organ Company Opus 323, installed in 1911 in Portland’s Merrill Auditorium.
The program will include Bach’s preludes and fugues in C major and minor, BWV 547 and 546, Kennerley’s transcription of the Italian Concerto, BWV 971, and the Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542.
