Schoenstein & Co., Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill

By Thomas Murray on December 4 at 7:30 p.m.

Appointed musician-in-residence

On the shelves in our music room in Sinntal, Hessen State, Germany, there is a very special relic near the grand piano and the house organ: a heavy 30 cm (nearly 12 inches) long, squared timber cut from the trunk of an ancient olive tree that once stood in the lower part of the garden of Gethsemane. When the new, small Golgotha organ for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built in 2016, the keyboards were made from this wood.

Program planning

I write this column just as July is about to give way to August; even as a retired academic, this autumnal month nurtures my urge to begin making plans for musical programs of the fast-approaching fall semester! It was my custom through all fifty-two years of university employment to present my faculty recital on the second Monday of September—one week after Labor Day. Sometimes I played both organ and harpsichord, occasionally only one or the other.