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ANDOVER — Beginning Wednesday, April 9 at 1:15 p.m., organ music will waft from the sanctuary of Cochran Chapel as Phillips Academy’s music department offers the first of four weekly concerts, called "ORGANize your Lunch!” throughout the month of April that are free and open to the public.
The first concert will feature Andover faculty emerita Carolyn Skelton and her husband John Skelton, music director of the Maple Street Congregational Church in Danvers, Mass. The couple will present works by Adolph Friedrich Hesse, Louis Vierne, Nicolas Carlton, Oliver Messiaen, and Nikolaus Bruhns.
Interested members of the campus and the community are invited to bring a bag lunch and enjoy a half hour of exquisite music from the Academy’s pipe organ. The organ, built by the Andover Organ Company and installed in 1981, has 27 stops and 35 ranks and is mechanical, or tracker, action. Cochran Chapel is located on the Phillip Academy campus, on Chapel Ave., just off Main Street.
The concert series originated with Patrick Kabanda, instructor in music and organist for Phillips Academy. Kabanda said that because it is so unusual for a high school to have a pipe organ, he feels Andover should create opportunities to share its resplendent sounds with the community.
“With the dwindling interest in organ music from an educational perspective, we need to do more to expose the public to it,” he said. “Plus, this seems in line with one of PA’s goals, to be ‘a private school with a public purpose’.” In the past, Kabanda has played lunchtime organ concerts at various venues, including Central Synagogue in New York City, Harvard University, and, on May 2 he will play at Trinity Church in Boston.
Later concerts will feature Peter Stoltzfus Berton, organist and choir director at All Saints Church, Worcester, Mass.; George Davey, organist and choral director at Rutgers Presbyterian Church, New York City; and five students currently studying the organ with Kabanda at Phillips Academy.
The additional dates and programs, all at 1:15 p.m., are:
Wednesday, April 16: Peter Stoltzfus Berton — Works by Craig Seller Lang, Cesar Franck, Louis Viene, and J.S. Bach.
Wednesday, April 23: George Davey — Works by Dietrich Buxtehude, J.S. Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Buckley Farlee, and Eugene Gigout.
Wednesday, April 30: Lucy Maguire ’08, Margaret Finch ’09, Marianna Jordan ’09, Chelsea Carlson ’09, and John Turiano ’10 — Works by Johann Pachelbel, Samuel Scheidt, Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, and John Stainer.
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