Part music lesson, part recital, part spirited lecture, Cj Sambach's Pipe Organ Informance captivated a crowd of just over 100 people Sunday afternoon.
During the two-hour program at the First Congregational Church, the New Jersey-based "Pied Piper of the Pipe Organ” outlined the basic workings of the instrument, playing a total of nine pieces that illustrated each facet. Determined to spread the gospel of the classic church instrument far and wide, combating a gulf of indifference and ignorance, Sambach travels the country giving his educational programs for churches, schools and other groups.
Beginning with the Bach Toccata in D Minor — which he guaranteed everyone has heard the distinctive resounding notes — Sambach demonstrated the range and depth of the sounds available via the three keyboards, stops and foot pedals on the console and the ranks of pipes.
"This to me is what is so exciting and so fascinating about the pipe organ: the fact that one musical instrument can make an orchestra of sounds,” said Sambach, an organ performance graduate of Westminster Choir College. "It is the oldest synthesizer, which models what the organ has been doing for centuries.”
Given his special mission of reaching out to youth, Sambach would have been pleased at the reaction of Emily Northway, 8, who deemed the organ "very interesting.”
"It was kind of some stuff I knew because my grandma plays the organ and she's let me play 'Twinkle, Twinkle,'” said the Traverse City resident who attended the program with her mother and grandmother. "I learned a lot.”
Katie Northway, a substitute organist in St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Beulah and Emily's grandma, praised Sambach's approach and style to sharing about the instrument.
"It was fun, a great job of explaining everything,” she said.
The Cherry Capital Area Chapter of the American Guild of Organists hosted the Informance, part of a series of events they are coordinating this winter and spring to highlight what Sambach terms "the king of instruments.”
On March 4 at the Trinity Lutheran Church, the Interlochen Arts Academy organ majors will give a pre-spring-tour recital. Paul Jacobs, chair of the organ department at Juilliard, will give a dedicatory recital on April 22 to formally inaugurate the expanded organ at First Congregational Church. Back at Trinity on June 3, Charles Miller will give a recital on that church's instrument, which was extensively upgraded last year. Interlochen's organ in the Dendrinos Chapel also received a comprehensive facelift in 2006.
"This is really the year of the pipe organ, we're promoting the instrument” noted Bruce Ahlich, director of music at Trinity Lutheran Church and dean of the local organ guild. "We have three rather large fantastic instruments to bring to the public's attention.”
Sambach demonstrated the full beauty of the First Congregational Church's Casavant/Buck Pipe Organ, including lessons about music theory, the science of sound and the history of instrument as he went. Beginning with an analogy to the visual art of painting, Sambach noted that the organ is art appreciated through the auditory senses. Instead of three primary colors an artist combines on a palette, the organ has four sound "colors” a musician weaves into music: flutes, strings, reeds and the foundation sound.
"Sound is not something we can see, sound is not something we can touch,” he said. "The organ's equivalent of a canvas is an interval of time and the organ's equivalent of a paintbrush is the keyboard.”
Sambach fell in love with the organ while in the third grade, entranced by a console brimming with "gadgets.” He bided his time with piano lessons until the sixth grade when he was finally tall enough to reach the organ console's pedals, which had so fired his eight-year-old imagination.
"One of the things that attracted me to the organ was the pedal board,” he recalled. "I liked the fact that you could make music with your feet.”
Sambach completed the program with a piece written solely for the pedal board, where the organ's deep sounds derive.
"An organist gets to dance to his or her own music,” he noted, before playing an encore piece for the enthusiastic audience.