Barbara Dennerlein on (Virtual) Pipe Organ - Trinity Wall St. NYC

from Trinity Church website:
"Trinity Wall Street presents its third annual summer concert series featuring performances on its Marshall & Ogletree American Classic virtual pipe organ. Pedals and Pumps: A Festival of Organ Divas, highlights contemporary female musicianship and offers the talents of American, European, and Asian "organistas."

Barbara Dennerlein, Germany's most famous jazz recording star and concert organist, improvises her own works using both classical and modern jazz idioms. She will use theatrical registers programmed by Cameron Carpenter for the virtual pipe organ."

Trinity now has the entire concert posted on YouTube :-)

PS Barbara talks about this digital organ during a podcast interview over at
hammondb3.wordpress.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• pipe
• organ
• church
• classical
• jazz
• Barbara
• Dennerlein

[itachisharkak]

Was that supposed to be Toccata in D minor. That ruined a great piece by Bach, But Bach liked improvisation, and she is very skilled

[hans1970]

That was "New York Impressions" with a little "tip of the hat" to J.S. Bach.

[gingervytis]

Ya, you should show her how it ought to be done on a real air-blown organ. I'm sure she'd really appreciate your input and it would be a major step forward in her musical maturation.

[spocksss]

Ruined? Bach was the master of improvisation...

[TheMadMusicMan]

I do prefer the sound of a real air-blown organ but Barbara makes anything she puts her hands on sound superb. Go for it!

[l56787]

une grande organiste

[technocrash09]

@spocksss I agree! And so did the audience. If someone thinks this ruins anything the great improvisation-ist J.S. Bach knows very little about Bach's intentions. If not for artists like Dennerlein, we would be resigned to listening to only the first compositions of the masters over...and.over...and over until we were bored to tears. Improvise on, all you artists, and keep it new! I am quite sure if Johann was there, he would have given you a standing O!

[riverscuomo06]

@EccentricRichard all i'm saying there is that the organ is the only instrument where people obsess way more over the instrument than the music that comes out of it.

[EccentricRichard]

@riverscuomo06 - and "all digital organs can be way more musical than pipe". I'm not knocking Marshall & Ogletree's efforts - this instrument first made a major impression on me when I heard a stream of Nathan Laube playingMessiaen's Dieu Parmi Nous on it - but nothing can beat a great pipe organ for sheer musicality. There is no substitute for shifting hundreds of cubic feet of air - and the means of blowing is SO important too. Listen to St Maximin, or Roskilde Cathedral, to hear what I mean.

[EccentricRichard]

@riverscuomo06 - OK, jet fuel ain't funny. AVTUR is a pretty damaging thing unless properly contained. However, $2m not getting them a good organ? Back in 1994, Saint Ignatius Loyola got a STUNNING Mander (built here in the UK) for inside $1m. Don't tell me TWS couldn't have got a good organ for 2. Yes, digital maintenance costs are lower - but digitals last nothing like as long. I've encountered many a tracker organ that's gone over 100 years without overhaul and is still perfectly reliable...

[EccentricRichard]

@latribe - Aha! Trust me to find you here... and yes, we'll be at Hammerwood on Saturday. We might join you up at the church later - apart from anything, Dad's a bellringer too, so if you want/need another pair of hands...

[riverscuomo06]

@EccentricRichard and even if they did spend $2million on the digital, that's still cheaper than buying a new organ (or restoring the old one, which they didn't like) and the maintenance costs are way lower for the digital. one problem i have with all of this is a very common problem everywhere--people make way too big a deal about the organ and not enough about the music. all digital organs can be way more musical than pipe, no matter how good or bad the organ itself sounds.

[riverscuomo06]

@EccentricRichard ok, even if you could get an organ that fulfilled everything they wanted it to do (technically two organs with front and back) it would've taken way too long to get that made and installed. the skinner was completely wrecked not just from dust, but from the corrosion due to the jet fuel that was sucked into it. not a lot that could be salvaged without serious restoration work.

[EccentricRichard]

@riverscuomo06 - yes they could. This thing took a lot of development, a lot of construction, and ended up costing no less than an equivalent pipe organ. I seem to recall $2m being the figure I read. Now, they already had that old Skinner, which could at least have supplied them with a large amount of secondhand pipework. Also, redundant organs of all sizes, from small to very large, are commonly available - don't tell me they couldn't have got a more than adequate pipe organ.