10-16-03
SMITH CHAPEL ORGAN RECITAL NOVEMBER 9
On Sunday, November 9, the public will have its first opportunity to hear and view the pipe organ installed earlier this year in the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. The organ recital, which will begin at 3:00 p.m., is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Junker Center lot.
The public recital follows a private dedication ceremony and recital to be held the previous evening for the Smith family, organ builder Martin Ott, and college officials and friends. The Smith Chapel organ is also known as Opus 100, the 100th organ built by master organ builder Martin Ott of St. Louis. The instrument was given to the college by Larry and Kathryn Smith in honor of their children, Colleen and Kevin.
Opus 100 was designed specifically for the acoustics of the worship space in the Smith Chapel, making it unique architecturally and tonally. The organ is encased in oak and stands twenty-five feet high. It has twenty-three ranks made up of more than 1,200 pipes and has twenty-one stops. The stops are used to emulate and combine sounds from all of the tone families: principals, flutes, strings, and reeds. As an organist plays, he or she will continually adjust the stops to change the timbre and color of the sound. The organist can also use all the stops at once, hence the saying "pulling out all the stops."
The organ's two manual keyboards have fifty-six keys. The natural keys are grenadil wood, and the sharp keys are grenadil covered by cow bone. The pedal keyboards have 30 notes and are made of oak. The organ has mechanical key action, so that when a key is pressed, the corresponding pipe valve opens and wind in the air chamber passes through the pipe, producing sound.
The organist for the dedication and for the public recital will be Larry Smith, Ph.D., professor of music and chair of the organ department at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Dr. Smith's recital program will include works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Gardner Read, Paul Hindemuth, Gaston Litaize, Darius Milhaud, and Joseph Jongen.
Before his initial appointment to the Indiana University faculty in 1981, Dr. Smith served on the faculties of Kent State University and Converse College. Prior to his academic work he was full-time director of music at the First United Methodist Church in DesMoines, Iowa. He earned his doctor of musical arts degree at the Eastman School of Music, where he was awarded the school's prized Performer's Certificate in Organ.
Contact:
Loretta Brandon
814-898-6063 (O)
E-mail: lzb6@psu.edu