Hello Northrop community,
I’m Michael Barone, a member of the Friends of the Northrop Organ committee and writing this week’s Northrop MOVES Online edition. I’ve been a Minnesotan since 1968, when I took the job of Music Director at KSJR-FM in Collegeville. Those were the early days of what has become the Minnesota Public Radio network, and 52 years later, the first 25 of them as MPR Music Director and on-air host, I’m still in the saddle, these days as producer and host for PIPEDREAMS, which airs Sunday mornings from 6:00-8:00 a.m. on Classical MPR (99.5 FM in the Twin Cities).
I’ve watched the multiple re-awakenings of the Northrop pipe organ, beginning back in the 1970s at the hands of loving and meticulous technician Gordon Schultz, and made many hours of recordings with regional and visiting soloists exploring this remarkable instrument in its extraordinary space. As you might expect, I’m quite delighted by the Northrop organ’s new aural presence in the revised theater and am looking forward to next week’s first event of the 2020-21 Northrop Season, an in-person organ concert by Katelyn Emerson on Tue, Sep 29. The event will be live streamed as well.
Katelyn first came on my radar when she took top prize in the American Guild of Organists competition in Houston in 2016. As I’ve been covering those contests for PIPEDREAMS since 1980, I interviewed her following her win and have kept track of her progress ever since, her post-grad residency in Boston, her studies in France, appearances at subsequent AGO and Organ Historical Society conventions, and her studies in Germany.
After intermission, the virtuosic variations from Widor’s famous Fifth Symphony (which concludes with the iconic Toccata—wait for it!) provide some French froth, leading to a truly light-hearted excerpt from one of America’s earliest organ virtuosos, Horatio Parker. Karg-Elert calms us down with a glowing portrait of The Night, before Katelyn launches into a prototypical chorale-fantasy by Reimann. It’s a work that launched a series of similar pieces by even more imposing scores from his younger colleague Max Reger (which we’ll save for another occasion). All 108-ranks of the Northrop organ will be tested in every way imaginable way, from whisper to torrent.
Whether you join live or online, don’t miss this exceptional young artist as Katelyn commands the console of the Northrop organ.
And as an appetizer, you might enjoy listening to the very first solo recital on the renewed Northrop organ, performed Dec 4, 2018 by Nathan Laube, and audible to you at any time in the PIPEDREAMS archive.
Michael Barone
PIPEDREAMS
