Adam Brakel plays Buxtehude Praeludium in D Minor

The twenty-two-rank electro-pneumatic-action pipe organ designed and built by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Co. of Boston, Massachusetts, for the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City and installed there in 1966 was taken out for a long-needed thorough rejuvenation over the summer by the Schantz Organ Company of Orrville, Ohio. The unique instrument with two manuals and 1,289 pipes in twelve voices and twenty-two ranks was whisked away from Lincoln Center to Ohio last April after undergirding that season’s final performance of Tosca.

Stephen Ketterer residence, Sharon, Connecticut; Rudolf von Beckerath Orgelbau, Hamburg, Germany

One might expect the story behind creating a home pipe organ of this size to be an unusual one. But, in fact, it is rather straightforward.

On July 27, 2018, my dear colleagues and friends, Yannick Merlin and Béatrice Piertot, introduced me to Pierre Labric at his residence southwest of Paris in Dreux. Labric is perhaps best remembered in this country for recording the complete organ symphonies of both Widor and Vierne on the legendary Cavaillé-Coll instruments of St-Ouen, Rouen (Widor), and St-Sernin, Toulouse (Vierne).

Mary Louise Simmons, 91, died in Evanston, Illinois, on January 30. She was born Mary Louise Day in Centralia, Illinois, on February 22, 1930. As a young child she was discovered to have perfect pitch and began taking piano lessons at the age of six when the family moved to Carbondale, Illinois.