August 2026

From the organist

Introduction

In Zen they say, “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on.” Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.¹

—John Cage (1912–1992)

The audience, hundreds of people, paid to come on the evening of June 11 to the Basilica of Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, 263 Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan, to see and hear its celebrated 1868 Henry Erben pipe organ. It had served the church since he completed it, but was taken away two years ago to a workshop in Pennsylvania to be restored to its original condition after a century and a half of wear and tear.

How long have you been playing there?

Last month I took a driving trip from home in western Massachusetts to Buffalo, through Québec to Ann Arbor, and on to Chicago where the Organ Clearing House was working on a project. I drove home through Champaign, Illinois, and Columbus, Ohio. I visited several organs that I am involved with, had meals with friends and colleagues, and enjoyed the new car that I wrote about last month in these pages—the odometer showed about nine hundred miles when I set out.

Harrison Cole