Performer Nancy Joyce Cooper will help dedicate the new St. Barnabas pipes.
Last summer, a large Mayflower truck pulled up in front of Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church.
A crowd of parishioners stood waiting to unload the precious cargo – the unassembled Bond Opus 33, a custom-built pipe organ whose arrival was two years in the making.
Congregants spent that morning carrying pieces of the organ into the church and spreading them over the floor of the refurbished nave. Then began the two-week process of reassembling the organ and “voicing,” or tuning it so that the sound emanating from the pipes perfectly fit the sanctuary’s acoustics.
“I didn’t take my summer vacation,” said Saint Barnabas Music Director Paul Roy. “I was at the church practically every day. It was very exciting.”
This weekend, Nancy Joyce Cooper, music professor at the University of Montana will perform two concerts on the new organ, the first of which is part of an ongoing series of dedicatory programs for the instrument.
The new organ replaced a Moller Artiste that was built with the church in the 1940s, got refurbished in the 1970s, and clearly stood on its last legs.
Roy convened a committee that decided replacing the organ would prove more cost-effective than repairing it. A substantial donation from a parishioner enabled them to commence the search for a builder.
That process alone took a year and sent committee members, some of whom were architects and woodworkers, across the country and into Canada. They talked with prospective builders and inspected every inch of the organs they found, sometimes even crawling into the instruments.
The committee sought a builder who could embrace the design of the Saint Barnabas sanctuary – a particular combination of intimate simplicity and soaring Gothic embellishment including an impressive arch and stained glass focal point.
“Some constructors said, ‘Cover the window,’” Roy said. “We knew they’d be off our list.”
In the end, the committee went with Bond Organ Builders of Portland, Ore., whose reputation, proximity and working style fit the committee’s goals. Now that it’s ensconced, says Roy, “The organ looks like it’s always been there. To me, that’s a good comment. We did our work.”
Nancy Cooper is a big fan.
“I love Bond organs,” she said, “and I know that they play all repertoire well.”
She chose the selections for Friday’s concert based on her own musical interests but with an ear to ushering in the new organ.
Two of the pieces take their titles from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, which Cooper found appropriate. And she believes that Messiaen’s “God Among Us,” the program’s final piece, “is one of the greatest organ works of the 20th century, and…a fitting end to a celebration of a new instrument.”
Roy and Cooper first connected when he played a wedding one Saturday in Missoula, Mont. The next day, he decided to track down an Episcopal service.
“Lo and behold, there was this beautiful organ case,” he said. “And the organist looks familiar too!”
It turned out that Roy knew Cooper by reputation, and her church happened to have installed a Bond organ a few years earlier.
“I gave him, as I recall, quite the speech about how wonderful and marvelous Bond organs are,” Cooper said.
In another coincidence, some of the wood left over from the construction of the organ in Cooper’s church was later used at Saint Barnabas. That was the clincher for Roy, so he asked Cooper to perform this weekend.
“There’s a little bit of ‘bonding’ going on,” he said.
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Pipes fitting
Nancy Joyce Cooper performs a dedicatory organ concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Saint Barnabas church. She also performs “The Music of the Time of Thomas Jefferson” at 10 a.m. March 31. Tickets for each are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors/students/AGO members; call 842-5601.
