August 2020

Kegg Pipe Organ Builders, Hartville,

Ohio, 30th anniversary

Kegg Pipe Organ Builders began building new pipe organs in 1990, and 2020 marks thirty years with project opera 64, 65, and 66 presently under construction. Opus 64 is a new 47-rank four-manual instrument for Christ the King Chapel at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. Opus 65 is a new console and restoration of the California Organ Company/Reuter organ in the St. Francis Auditorium at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe. Opus 66 is a new organ for Little Flower Church in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Which church is the oldest church in Nigeria?

This photographic essay explores the work of two pipe organ builders. One is a business with over a dozen employees; the other is an owner/organbuilder who works with associates when large projects dictate additional help. One firm has embraced technology, electric action and stops, augmented with solid-state electronics; the other builds tracker-action instruments where, on smaller instruments, the blower motor is the only electrical part. Both have extremely well-equipped woodworking shops.

Making things

David Stephen Boe died April 28, 2020, in Chicago, Illinois. Since 2012, he and his wife, Sigrid North Boe, had lived at a Chicago retirement community, where they moved to be near family.

The Art of the Fugue, part 8

In the last few columns, I have started writing and thought of a suitable and effective name for each column somewhere along the way, even at the end of the process. However, today I was able to start with the title, because it is time to get back to writing about Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of the Fugue!