Quimby Pipe Organs, Warrensburg, Missouri
Dunwoody United Methodist Church, Dunwoody, Georgia
Quimby Pipe Organs Opus 76, recently installed at Dunwoody United Methodist Church, comprises 100 ranks distributed over five manual divisions, playable from a four-manual and pedal console. The completion of this instrument represents the culmination of an idea and process that began in 2007.
More than a century and a half after his birth, Ernest Martin Skinner (born January 15, 1866; died November 27, 1960) is still acknowledged to be one of the most innovative of American organbuilders. Skinner created instruments that emphasized orchestral-imitative stops (such as the French Horn and English Horn), with consoles that were models of practical design. He created exquisite and colorful soft stops, including the Erzähler, the Orchestral Oboe, and the English Horn.
Embracing new, creative approaches, a groundbreaking initiative, “Playing and Preserving: Saving and Activating Philadelphia’s Historic Pipe Organs to Advance Music and Community,” aims to generate public support for the preservation and active use of the organ heritage of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The initiative, already underway, builds relationships among congregations, artists, music lovers, organbuilders, and the broader public.
Breathtaking
My father was, among many other things, an ardent and slightly kooky baseball fan. He grew up in Cincinnati watching the Reds at Crosley Field and started a lifelong relationship with the Boston Red Sox when he was in seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was eleven years old in 1967, the year of the Impossible Dream, when the Red Sox won the American league pennant behind the bat and fielding of Carl Yastrzemski. I think it was that summer that Dad took me to Fenway Park for the first time.
Mabel Zehner (photo credit: Ashland University Archives, Ashland, Ohio)
Giving thanks from A to Z, part 2: Moving to Dallas (1970)
