September 2001

Cover

Martin Pasi, Roy, Washington

Bedford Presbyterian Church, Bedford, New York

The Millennium Organ

Remembering David's (and my) digs

David Britton died on September 22, 1992. As AIDS continues
still to take its toll, one thing we survivors can do is to make certain that
our stories and shared memories are not totally lost. Herbert Howells once said
to me, "The worst thing about growing old is that all your friends are
dead." Perhaps we have come to realize this earlier than those of some
previous generations. So, remembering David, here is a bit of mutual history.

Larry Abbott, 75,
died quietly in his home in Santa Monica, California, on June 29. He was a
founding partner of Abbott and Sieker Organbuilders, the Los Angeles firm that
led the revival of tracker organbuilding on the West Coast in the early 1960s.
At the time of his retirement as firm president in 1991, Abbott and Sieker had
built or rebuilt over 100 organs. Several established West Coast organbuilders
worked at Abbott and Sieker before launching their individual firms. A native
Californian, Abbott served in the U.S.

"Despite the nay-sayers, the organ is very much alive
and we're going to keep it that way." With that hopeful remark, Fred Swann
opened the third annual Organ Alive! conference at First Congregational Church
of Los Angeles. Swann started this conference when he assumed the position of
organist at the church three years ago, in response to a request from the
church leaders for more prominence for the organ. The previous year's
conference in January 2000 had been a retrospective of the organ in the 20th
century.

This article began as an address at the conference,
"Organ Alive!--The Organ in the 21st Century," held January 12–16,
2001, at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. A report on the
conference is featured in this issue of The Diapason, on pages 18–21.

The Lee Conklin Antique Organ and History Museum in Hanover,
Michigan and the Heiss Haus Museum in Nashville, Michigan were joint hosts for
a two-day festival and officers' meeting of the Reed Organ Society on the
weekend of April 28-29, 2001. Throughout the nearly twenty-year history of the
Society, members have gathered for such festivals at any number of locations,
including music museums in Deansboro, New York; Kilkenny, Ireland; and
Saltaire, England.