by Daniel Hathaway
The Norton Memorial Organ in Severance Hall — one of E.M. Skinner’s finest concert hall instruments — enjoyed a rare moment in the spotlight at The Cleveland Orchestra’s opening concert on September 29, led by music director Franz Welser-Möst. In the hands (and under the feet) of Paul Jacobs, it played a starring role both in Aaron Copland’s Organ Symphony, and in a thrilling encore that brought the large audience spontaneously to its own feet. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Eastman School of Music organ professor David Higgs inaugurated the restored 1926 E.M. Skinner organ in Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium on September 18, 2011, when he appeared as soloist in the Poulenc Concerto and in the Saint-Saëns ‘Organ’ Symphony with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra. This Sunday, April 12 at 4:00 pm, Higgs will return to Youngstown to play an eclectic recital on what has come to be recognized as one of the most distinguished organ restorations in the country, a project undertaken by the A. Thompson-Allen Company of New Haven, Connecticut.
At that time, Higgs told the Youngstown Vindicator, “It’s one of the finest examples of organs built in the 1920s by Ernest Skinner. Skinner was the Rolls-Royce of organ builders, and Stambaugh’s was built in the American symphonic style.” (September 15, 2011). [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Last Sunday afternoon’s screening of Harold Lloyd’s silent film comedy Speedy delighted the Stambaugh Auditorium audience in Youngstown and offered improvised organ accompaniment by Todd Wilson. This type of improvisation was common in the 1920’s and even helped the late, noted musicologist Donald Grout pay for his higher education. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Well-known concert organist Todd Wilson will explore another side of his art this month when he improvises musical scores to two silent film classics at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown and Severance Hall in Cleveland. Speedy, Harold Lloyd’s 1928 Paramount film, which chronicles the attempts of Harold “Speedy” Swift to save the last horse-drawn streetcar in New York (with a cameo appearance by Babe Ruth) will be screened at Stambaugh on Sunday, October 19 at 4:00 pm. Then the 1925 silent version of Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney, will be shown at Severance Hall on Tuesday, October 28 at 7:30 pm. Phantom is part of this season’s Cleveland Orchestra’s Celebrity Series, but Wilson will be the only musician on stage for the occasion. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
American organist Jonathan Ryan will open this season’s organ series on the E.M. Skinner instrument in Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium on Sunday, September 28 at 4:00 pm.
Ryan, who is currently assistant music director at Christ Episcopal Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, began his professional studies with Todd Wilson at the Cleveland Institute of Music before moving on to graduate studies at Eastman.
by Daniel Hathaway
Organist Edward Moore and pianist Nathan Carterette will perform both as soloists and as an unusual duo on the Stambaugh Auditorium Organ Series in Youngstown on Sunday afternoon, March 30 at 4:00 pm. Both musicians are recent transplants to Pittsburgh, Moore having moved there from Washington DC, and Carterette from Cleveland.
They met when Carterette attended an organ/piano concert that Moore gave at East Liberty Presbyterian Church, where he serves as director of music. “I heard them play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Carterette said during a Skype to two cell phones conversation during a rehearsal break at Stambaugh last week. “It was so fantastic. Ed produced every instrument in the orchestra on the organ.”
by Daniel Hathaway
Historical film buffs, Sci-Fi fans and organ enthusiasts: listen up. You’re all going to find this event exciting. On Sunday, February 9 at 4:00 pm, Philadelphia organist Peter Richard Conte will improvise a musical score to Fritz Lang’s 1927 German silent film classic, Metropolis, using the eloquent resources of the E.M. Skinner symphonic organ in Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown.
Filmed during the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia plagued by class warfare. The first full-length Science Fiction film, Metropolis cost about 5 million Reichmarks, making it the most expensive film made to date. The original film was accompanied by a full orchestra score composed by Gottfried Huppertz in the style of Wagner and Strauss. Metropolis was reconstructed and restored to its nearly-original length of 148 minutes in 2010 using recently-discovered footage from as far away as Argentina.
Peter Richard Conte divides his busy life among three posts. He presides at the famous Wanamaker organ at Macy’s in center city for twice-daily recitals and regular broadcasts, he serves as organist and choirmaster at St. Clement’s, an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church, and he plays and oversees the organ series at Pierre DuPont’s Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
Chicago-born concert organist Nathan Laube will be the next featured recitalist on the Stambaugh Auditorium series in Youngstown on Sunday, November 17 at 4:00 pm. Laube will play music by Widor, Mendelssohn, Rossini and Liszt on the recently-restored E.M. Skinner organ, including two of his own arrangements.
Though his Youngstown program is tilted toward nineteenth century Romantic composers, Nathan Laube is omnivorous when it comes to the organ and the music written for that instrument — both of which vary widely from one country to another and across different eras and epochs of musical taste. We reached Laube in Shreveport, LA during a break in his practice time for a recital there last weekend to talk about what he’d been up to since we last heard him several years ago at the Organ Historical Society convention in Cleveland — and he’s been up to a lot.
“I’ve been in Europe for three years, first on a Fulbright to Toulouse in France, then to earn my master’s degree at the Music Hochschule in Stuttgart. I also served as artist-in-residence at the American Cathedral in Paris. During that time, I was lucky to have access to the finest collection of historical organs in the world!”
by Daniel Hathaway
American organist Paul Jacobs will be featured in the opening recital of this season’s organ series at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown. On Sunday, September 22 at 4 pm, Jacobs will offer an eclectic program on the E.M. Skinner organ, originally installed at Stambaugh in 1926 and recently and wonderfully restored to its original condition.
Jacobs deserves a place in the Guinness Book of Records for prodigious feats of organ playing, including an 18-hour marathon concert of Bach’s complete organ works in Pittsburgh in 2000 celebrating the composer’s 250th birthday, and eight cycles of the complete oeuvre of Olivier Messiaen in different American cities, each presented in a nine-hour, non-stop concert. And all of that from memory.
Jacobs is a celebrated performer but is equally dedicated to teaching. He joined the faculty at the Juilliard School in New York in 2003 in his mid-twenties, one of the youngest appointees in the history of that distinguished institution. As chairman and the sole member of the organ department, Jacobs is responsible for the nurture of the eight young organists in his studio. [Read more…]
by Robert Rollin
Peter Richard Conte’s Sunday afternoon Stambaugh Auditorium organ concert was a delight. The large, recently renovated Skinner organ, putatively a gem of its type, was certainly put through its paces. The program, full of interesting highlights, included music from the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth-century organ literature.
Conte, who presides at the mammoth organs at Macy’s in Philadelphia (formerly Wanamaker’s) and Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA as well as serving as music director at St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, performed two interesting transcriptions of his own during the first half. The Mondscheinmusik from Richard Strauss’ opera Capriccio, opus 85 provided evocative post-Wagnerian harmony and tone color. Originally an orchestral interlude, the transcription provided the opportunity to feature string and French horn organ timbres. The music, enriched with many non-chord tones, presented lovely translucent accompaniment to beautiful melodic material.
Otto Nicolai’s lusty comic opera overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor provided source material for Conte’s second transcription. Here the irrepressible Falstaff pursues two married women who ultimately throw him into the river. [Read more…]