Summer Music

Many people have asked me to record an organ piece.  I recorded J. S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Minor (“The Cathedral”) in June on E. & G.G. Hook’s Opus 288 at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor.  Listen here:

https://soundcloud.com/catherine-bruno/prelude-and-fugue-in-e-minor

The St. John’s Organ Society Summer Concert series is off to a wonderful start featuring outstanding organ music performed by artists from Europe, Asia, and North America.  This summer four of our six concerts feature two performers.

On July 24, Rudolf Innig from Bielefeld, Germany started the series performing music of J.S. Bach, Horatio Parker, Felix Mendelssohn, and Josef Rheinberger.  My two daughters and two granddaughters were visiting us in Maine and they enjoyed the concert.

On July 31, we heard the husband and wife team of Naomi Shiga and Jonathan Wohlers from Tacoma Washington, play music of Adolph Friedrich Hesse, Johannes Brahms, J. S. Bach, Johann Christian Bach, and Jean Sibelius.  They played three duets and each of them played three individual pieces.  The audience particularly enjoyed a transcription for organ duet of Sibelius’ famous Finlandia, Opus 26, no.7.

For more information about the upcoming four St. John’s Organ Society concerts:  http://hookopus288.org/ or https://www.facebook.com/hookopus288.  St. John's Organ Society is a nonprofit organization committed to the preservation and appreciation of the historic E. & G. G. Hook pipe organ, Opus 288, located at St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor.  I am the Secretary of the Board of the St. John's Organ Society, and I write the publicity materials for these organ concerts.

St. Saviour Episcopal Church in Bar Harbor, Maine, also has a summer organ concert series on their 1976 Visser-Rowland organ (Opus 6).  On August 1, I attended a concert performed by Dr. Kevin Birch, who is my teacher, the Director of Music at St. John’s, and the Director of the St. John’s Organ Society.  Kevin expertly played 16^th and 17^th-century organ music by Bernardo Pasquini, an anonymous English composer, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and Nicolaus Bruhns.

Next week (August 11-15) I will be in Syracuse, New York attending the convention of the Organ Historical Society.  I look forward to spending time with many friends and to hearing historic organs played by skilled organists.

It is hard to believe that school starts in less than a month!  The fall semester at the University of Maine begins on September 2.