2014 Kegg Organ - Bryn Athyn Cathedral - Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania
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- čas přidán 14. 05. 2022
- Brent Johnson talks with Charles Kegg of Kegg Pipe Organs Builders along with Luke Staisiunas and Dylan David Shaw about the Kegg pipe organ installed in Bryn Athyn Cathedral in 2014.
Specification of the organ: assets.website-files.com/60fb...
Bryn Athyn Church: brynathynchurch.org/
Kegg Pipe Organ Builders: www.keggorgan.com/
Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America: apoba.com/
Luke Staisiunas: www.boardwalkorgans.org/recit...
Dylan David Shaw: www.dylandavidshaw.com/
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What a stunning organ Wow!
I can only imagine what a glorious service playing organ this is.
Inside it's also beautiful
Another beautiful organ and superb demonstration. That climb up the ladder to the Great with that vast open arch behind looks terrifying!
I would love to be an organ builder. But having a head for heights and nerves of steel is apparently an essential qualification - so that rules me out!
I really enjoy Luke's playing and the way he demonstrates the stops.
He missed some accidentals in the Ireland/Rowley, at 22:51 but we'll give him a break just this once.
@@praestant8 A little extra spice ;)--The joys of one take recordings on an unfamiliar organ after a day of driving around!
@Louis Glen-thanks! Glad you enjoyed it, it was nice to have the builder there to guide the tour along!
A fascinating instrument. Much thought has clearly been put towards melding two organs into one, with judicious additions. A truly SYMPHONIC execution !
Thank you Brent for your wonderful tour of Philadelphia area organs. Charles Kegg is a master organ designer, builder, and restorer. Excellent example here of combining resources of two older Skinner organs with additional stops from other sources, creating a great "new" Skinner/Kegg masterpiece. The sum is definitely greater that its original parts. I love the large Gambas on the celestial division. Also kudus to Mr. Kegg on his mustache and beard.
Masterpiece? It's just another bucket of slush with no choruses to speak of like so many else... to fail to use the opportunity to provide proper complete choruses as Henry Willis III would have done is, frankly, sad. Yes, it makes pretty noises in orchestral transcriptions, but as an *organ* it really fails to convince.
By kook oh good 😊
What a very cool organ! So many organs are 85% blue button-down shirts and khaki pants. This one has velvet tuxedo jackets and French cuffs everywhere you look. Nothing against blue shirts and khaki pants--classic and timeless--but this organ is a star! Thanks, Brent, Charles, Luke, and Dylan!
What is a "cool organ" ?
What a wonderful organ! Kegg have to be commended for such a great job with this instrument!
What an amazing instrument! Kegg did a wonderful job with this instrument!
What a cool organ. Well played Dylan and Luke!
My church has a set of Deagan Tube chimes we had installed in 1923! absolutely stunning to see a set like this repurposed for this organ.
If you are in the Philadelphia area, You can hear it this evening 5/15. don't know if the release date was panned, but what a great timing
Enjoy a memorable evening of inspiring readings and music from Bryn Athyn Cathedral’s magnificent organs.
Rev. Eric Carswell will offer the readings and Michael Smith, Organist & Minister of Music at St. Thomas’ Church in Whitemarsh, PA, will be on the organ bench. Michael will offer solo pieces including Gerre Hancock's beautiful Air for Organ, an Impromtu by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a charming medley of Gaelic tunes by Paul Halley and Elgar's solemn and evocative "Nimrod."
The vespers is an hour long and suitable for ages 12 and up. Freewill donations are welcome. The Cathedral grounds will open at 6:30pm for those who would like to take a smartphone tour of the gardens beforehand.
I visited the cathedral over twenty five years ago. A beautiful building. I didn't hear the organ and can't remember much about it. I think an electronic instrument was installed later.
Would love to have heard this organ played in its full power and majesty .
Stunning instrument and building! Beautifully voiced and beautifully played. My only question would be, why on earth would a cathedral like this - with this fantastic pipe organ - dare to install an Allen digital job in the rear gallery?!?! Seems not only superfluous, but downright weird. (just my opinion...)
Probably there before the Kegg.
What a beautiful instrument. And it was wonderful to hear the lovely Ireland "Elegy" again.
But (once again) you failed to demonstrate the PEDAL division...
They did demonstrate it... there are only two ranks, a Bourdon and an Open Wood, the rest is all borrowed.
@@richardharrold9736 No, they DID NOT demonstrate it. You must have seen a different video than I did.
Your rudeness is not appreciated.
@@bobh5087 I watched this same video. We heard both Pedal ranks plus the 16ft Tuba extension. Unlike you, I wasn't rude.
Thanks, great demo of an amazing instrument. But it's scary see how you climb up and step over to get into those high chambers!
What artistic fine work! I think EM would recognise his his spirit.
Is that second touch trem in other organs? i have never heard of that.
Just a note: organists can you please express your opinions without insulting each other?
Some of us are trying to preserve our good relations with colleagues and clergy.
the reed in play with the tremulant and Vox Celeste and Salicitional , is it the swell oboe or Vox Humana?
Wow
nice
I am a theatre organ guy. This has some wonderful romantic stops!
What happened to the 4 manual Allen they had before?? Lol.
I have always found it odd that a company completes a rebuild of an instrument and then calls it their own. Just because I rebuild/restore a Ford doesn't allow me to call it a Smith etc...
Are you aware that many organ builders do not make their own components, pipes, etc? Rosales of Los Angeles whose name appears on the Disney organ and the new organ for Trinity Church Wall Street voiced the organs but the pipes and mechanisms were actually built by his partner Glatter-Goëtz in Germany, and "his" organ at Rice University was totally built by Fisk. This is a Kegg organ even if many pieces are traced to Skinner's shop.
@@drbobdrake Reuter makes all of their own pipes, no? Your point is, well, pointless as you are comparing new assembled instruments to rebuilds, try again, har!...
That’s because is not just a rebuild, it’s largely a new chassis, some new pipework, and a new tonal design utilizing the pipework of older organs.
@@The2010SnowDay Beautiful instrument for sure:) Great job Mr. Kegg!
@@drbobdrake they (Rosales) arguably didn't voice the mentioned organs either as the pipes spoke just fine when installed by Glatter-Goetz. Maybe input on scaling/design and finishing once onsite, but not making cutups and shop voicing by any means.
Some nice sounds. Mr. Staisiunas' violin vibrato might be a bit misleading to the uninformed that it isn't his exaggerated hand movement doing it, a second set of contacts one pushes the key just slightly heavier on (without additional gyrations) engages the tremolo.
Unfortunately, the comments about APOBA and the intimation that all members employ the "highest standards" is propaganda that is required to be stated when receiving funding from them for such ventures.
You must be fun at parties.
Why is there an Alien organ still there? Get rid of it!
Seems a missed opportunity to provide a proper unenclosed Great in a case in front of the arches that make up the present uninspiring façade. The idea of a Great all being enclosed with a French Horn but no mixture is just so idiotic that only a fool like Skinner could have come up with it. The enclosed Great needs to be turned into a Solo division and what little chorus there is brought out in the open with a mixture replacing that ugly foghorn of a large Open Diapason.
The First Open is plenty colorful, but not for use in the chorus. The remainder of the great has plenty of clarity and brightness to render contrapuntal music. It plays Bach fabulously, you just have to register it like a Skinner. One wouldn’t sit at a Schnitgner and couple all the manuals together, but here coupling is part of the design.
@@The2010SnowDay you shouldn't have to couple all the manuals together just to get one decent chorus even in a 1920s romantic organ. Go and look at the specs of a vintage Arthur Harrison like Newcastle City Hall - five rank Swell Mixture, nine ranks of Mixtures on the Great, and a small 16-8-4-2 Choir chorus topped with a 3-rank mixture. That's an unaltered 1929 spec. Westminster Abbey's original 1937 spec was the same. Lord Glentanar's 4-manual house organ (1924 Harrison, now in the Temple Church, London) had the Choir and Swell mixtures plus the 4-rank Great Harmonics mixture.
Willis III likewise provided multiple complete choruses - Westminster Cathedral has a Pedal up to 2ft with a couple of mutations, the Great has four mutations and an ear-splitting five-rank mixture which scared the living daylights out of Skinner when he heard it - plus a smaller mixture in the Swell, a Solo Flute chorus 16-8-4-2 and a small Choir 16-8-4-2 chorus with a couple of mutations - all that from a spec written in 1922! Sheffield City Hall has a 16-8-4-2 2/3-2-1 3/5 Choir chorus with a 3-rank mixture (albeit it's only Dulcianas 3 1/5, 2 2/3 and 2ft), a Great 3-rank mixture and a Swell 5-ranker. Again, unaltered 1932. Liverpool Cathedral's original 1926 spec contains eight ranks of Pedal mixtures (plus a 5 1/3 and three 4fts), the Choir had a 16-8-4-2 Dulciana chorus, unenclosed, plus an enclosed small chorus up to a 5-rank Dulciana Mixture, the Great plenum goes from 32ft through to ten ranks of Mixtures, the Swell likewise goes from 16ft through to ten ranks of Mixtures, the Solo has a string chorus of 16-8-4-2 plus mixture, the Bombarde has a ten-rank Diapason chorus on a single knob... choruses and ensembles were at the heart of everything the Willises and Harrisons did!
Anyway, it is one thing to preserve Skinner's idiocies as a warning from history, and as a collection of mostly pleasant or at least inoffensive noises, but it is quite another to pretend that he was a great organ-builder and, worse, to repeat and perpetuate his mistakes over eighty years after GDH began correcting them... this Kegg thing is devoid of any impressive organ tone. The best of it is the orchestral imitative ranks, but those are no better than Willis's and do not compensate for the massively disappointing lack of any kind of cohesive ensemble. The reeds also lack Willis's characteristic ability to blend into the ensemble despite their astounding power and attack. For an organ of this sort of relatively modest size, Truro Cathedral blows this crate of bits out of the water.
@@richardharrold9736 You do couple, and should, because that is how the organ is intended to work. There is plenty of organ tone to be had, and plenty of clarity.
@@The2010SnowDay it may be intended to work that way, but that way doesn't work, it's completely useless as an organ. There is only one chorus in this whole bucket of slush and it has nowhere near the impact it should do. American organ-building hit its zenith in the 1880s-90s (Hook & Hastings, Hutchings, Roosevelt), then went into steep decline, not reversed until GDH, Harry Willis and Richard Whitelegg from Willis arrived in the late 20s. E. M. Skinner organs, along with those of Austin, Aeolian, and that Wanamaker behemoth in the Wanamaker store, are just dull, unblending noise machines. They have no singing organ tone, none of the nobility or grandeur required of any significant organ - it took GDH, starting with organs like Woolsey Hall and St Peter's Morristown, to sort out the mess and provide something like what European organists expected. The typical Skinner spec with a Great composed almost entirely of 8ft tone with a 4ft or two, a French Horn and a borrowed Bourdon shared with the Pedal, a dark Swell with one tiny Dulciana Mixture and dark, opaque reeds and a Choir composed solely of 8fts plus a 4ft Flute and an incongruous Nazard with no 2ft to cover it, plus a Solo again all 8ft, is absolutely no musical use whatsoever. Go to Groton, Methuen and Boston to learn about choruses, then tell me an organ like this crate of bits is a good idea.
@@The2010SnowDay Another guy who must be fun at parties. I don't know what it is about pipe organists and organophiles, but a lot of them are like this guy; incredibly opinionated, and convinced that their own opinions are gospel truth and everyone else's are wrong. It's because of this that I've shied away from attending AGO meetings, even when I've been a member (required to get certifications).