Playing and Preserving

Community Concert Details

Partners for Sacred Places has collaborated with Astral Artists and Play On, Philly! (POP )to organize a series of family-friendly, community concerts.

All concerts are free, open to the public, and take place on the following dates and times.

Friday, October, 25, 2019, 6-7pm

Featuring: Project Fusion; POP wind ensemble; and Michael Lawrence, Director of Music/Organist/Choirmaster at St. Mary’s Hamilton Village

Friday, November 22, 2019, 6-7pm

Featuring: Thomas Mesa, cello; Greg Zelek, organ; POP cello ensemble

Saturday, December 21, 2019, 2-3pm

Featuring: Tommy Mesa, cello; Greg Zelek, organ; Chrystal E. Williams, mezzo-soprano; Play On, Philly! Symphony Orchestra; Play On, Philly! Choir

The concerts will be preceded by four pre-concert experience stations with POP students (30 minutes prior to the start time) that will cover topics such as organ education, performance practices, rehearsal techniques, and cross-genre program planning. Astral Artists will lead the pre-concert experience stations, and will include saxophone quartet Project Fusion, cellist Thomas Mesa, mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams, and organist Greg Zelek.

Location

St. Mary’s Hamilton Village
3916 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA.

This historic church was first built in 1824, and the present Gothic Revival structure of fieldstone was first used in 1873. Changes were made after a disastrous fire in 1936, including the present organ, an Opus 963 organ by Aeolian-Skinner Organ Co., installed in the fall of 1937.

Playing and Preserving Overview

Philadelphia’s pipe organs, and the sacred places that contain them, are some of the city’s greatest treasures. Yet, changing religious landscapes, musical tastes, and technology over the last 20 to 30 years are putting both sacred places and their historic pipe organs at risk. One expert estimated that nearly 50% of the instruments featured in the Organ Historical Society’s national convention in Philadelphia nearly twenty years ago maybe be partially destroyed, dormant, or unplayable.

Playing and Preserving will identify key historic pipe organs at risk in sacred places throughout Philadelphia’s neighborhoods; activate these important instruments through technical assistance and support to the congregations that steward them; and work with project partners and artists to develop presentations and concerts that engage the local community in preservation through music. Project components include:

• SURVEY HISTORIC PIPE ORGANS AT RISK OUTSIDE PHILADELPHIA’S CITY CENTER
• TRAINING AND SUPPORT FOR A COHORT OF TEN CONGREGATIONS
• PILOT PERFORMANCES IN A UNIQUE SPACE WITH ASTRAL ARTISTS

Inventory

Partners is collaborating with pipe organ students from the Curtis Institute of Music to conduct an innovative survey of up to 50 historic pipe organs at risk in sacred places outside of Philadelphia’s urban core. Data on instrument construction, condition and age will be collected along with information about congregational health, collaborative readiness, openness to the arts, and other key factors. Their findings, including audio recordings of the pipe organs and photos of the sites, will be made available to the public through an online database.

Training and Capacity Building

An Advisory Committee will invite up to ten congregations from the survey to participate in a training and capacity-building program. The training will be adapted from Partners’ highly-regarded capacity-building programs to incorporate the historic organ as a key physical asset of the congregation. Each congregation will receive a full conditions assessment of its instrument, a guide to repair and restoration, and direct technical assistance to catalyze efforts to fundraise and preserve their instruments. Grants will be made available to support organ preservation work. Each grant will be matched on a one-to-one basis by the recipient church, using funds from other sources and/or in-kind support.

Pilot Performances

St. Mary’s, Hamilton Village, has been selected as a pilot project site for a series of community concerts. Astral Artists will organize a series of performances and events, including workshops for children from Play on, Philly!, which will highlight the historic pipe organ in ways that juxtapose and combine genres and styles of music such as gospel, jazz, classical and others. In the weeks before these concert experiences, Astral Artists will mentor the POP students during 4 short residency visits, building musical skills and relationships between young musicians actively studying and world-class musicians who perform all over the world.