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CD Review —
A Tribute to Yuko Hayashi: Christa Rakich, organ

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by Daniel Hathaway

A new CD by Christa Rakich, who is currently Visiting Professor of Organ at the Oberlin Conservatory, gives a nod in two directions. As its title announces, it’s an homage to her former teacher and colleague, the late Yuko Hayashi, longtime professor at the New England Conservatory and curator of Boston’s Old West Church Organ Series. It’s also the first recording to be made of Richards, Fowkes & Co.’s Opus 16 instrument, built in 2008 for Goodson Chapel of the Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. [Read more…]

Review: Jonathan William Moyer on the Newberry Organ at the Church of the Covenant (June 10)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Moyer-Newberry-OrganChurch of the Covenant music director Jonathan William Moyer capped off the dedication festivities for the Covenant’s new Richards, Fowkes & Co. North German-style organ on Sunday, June 10, with magisterial performances of music that neatly outlined the Liturgical Year in the space of an hour.

After an overture-like piece by George Muffat, Moyer’s program began in Advent and concluded with Pentecost, visiting the festivals of Christmas, Epiphany and Easter and the penitential season of Lent (and Holy Week) along the way, featuring settings of seasonal hymns by Nicolaus Bruhns, Dieterich Buxtehude, Heinrich Scheidemann and Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as a bucolic Noël by Jean-François Dandrieu and plainchant elaborations by three generations of Spanish composers — Juan Bermudo, Sebastian Aguilera de Heredia and Juan Cabanilles. Bach’s “Great” d-minor toccata and fugue finished the year with a postlude-like flourish. [Read more…]

Review: Church of the Covenant unveils splendid new organ in a day of celebration (May 12)

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by Timothy Robson

Covenant-Gallery-OrganIn a day of music and celebration on Sunday, May 12, the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland’s University Circle formally unveiled and dedicated its brilliant new organ, the Newberry Organ, built by Richards, Fowkes & Company of Ooltewah, Tennessee. The new organ was tested to its limits in a festival service in the morning featuring multi-choir works with Baroque-style instruments, and three other organs (two small Dutch portative organs as well as the church’s large mid-20th-century American Classic organ), followed by a concert in the afternoon by Oberlin Conservatory organ faculty head James David Christie, with a repeat of the multi-choral works from the morning. In between the two major events, the church’s director of music, Jonathan Moyer, gave a lecture on the new organ.

The new two-manual and pedal organ, which sits in a renovated rear organ gallery, is modeled on organs of 17th-century Holland and northern Germany. Its pitch and tuning enable the organist to simulate the sounds that would have been heard by the composers of the time, the late Renaissance and Baroque periods. [Read more…]

Review: The Newberry Consort: “Celestial Sirens” at the Church of the Covenant (March 20)

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by Nicholas Jones

Celestial-Sirens-ChicagoThe overlapping musical talents and resources of Cleveland’s early music community were in full multi-tasking mode at the Church of the Covenant last week — with some help from Chicago and Tennessee.

The occasion was one event in celebration of the church’s magnificent new tracker organ, modeled on north German 17th-century organs. The organ was built by the Tennessee firm of Richards, Fowkes and Company and installed only this January. It replaces a small gallery organ in the back of the church. A stop-action video documenting the organ’s installation is online at YouTube.

The organ is still being adjusted, but from what I heard, it has a lively delicacy that suits both early solo music and the accompaniment of singers. Boston-based organist Frances Fitch played it to great effect. [Read more…]

Preview: Newberry Consort to celebrate Church of the Covenant’s new Richards, Fowkes & Co. organ on March 20: a chat with Ellen Hargis

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by Daniel Hathaway

Newberry-Consort-SpanishChicago’s Newberry Consort will mark the arrival of the new 17th-century-style gallery organ at the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland’s University Circle with a concert entitled “Celestial Sirens” on Wednesday, March 20 at 7:30 pm. “It all came about with a handshake in the parking lot”, Ellen Hargis said in a phone conversation from her home in Chicago. Hargis is also on the faculty at Case, whose music department shares parking with the church. “One day I ran into Jonathan Moyer who told me about the new organ and I said ‘you need my Celestial Sirens concert.’”

That program, which features choral and instrumental music from 17th century Italian and Mexican convents, was itself the result of a chance encounter. Hargis was already thinking of constructing an Italian program drawing on the vast collections of unpublished music in convent libraries — partly suggested by Craig Monson’s book, Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, and Arson in the Convents of Italy. [Read more…]

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