Hear Eastman Organists and Guests at Free Tuesday Pipes Concerts

Across cities in Europe, both locals and tourists can stroll into a church and be enveloped by the powerful sound of a pipe organ––a keyboard instrument that uses pressurized air to produce sound through pipes. But in the United States, organ music is more often relegated to Sunday church services.

Rochesterians, however, get a little taste of Europe at Christ Church on East Avenue, down a block from the Eastman School of Music. Eastman students, faculty, and even guest organists perform free, casual concerts on its historical organs every Tuesday at 12:10 p.m. Concerts are 52 weeks per year, unless Christmas or New Year’s Day falls on a Tuesday. The series, which draws a dedicated audience, started in 2014 and celebrates its 10th anniversary.

The concerts were created by David Higgs, Minehan Family Professor of Organ and Chair of the Organ and Historical Keyboards Department at Eastman, to help show off the world-renowned organs in Christ Church, particularly the Craighead-Saunders organ at the back of the main church hall. Named for two of Eastman’s legendary former faculty members––David Craighead and Russell Saunders—the Craighead-Saunders organ is a replica of a 1776 organ located in Vilnius, Lithuania. The original was constructed by the important organ builder Adam Gottlop Casparini, whose instruments were the preferred organs of J.S. Bach.

To build the organ, contemporary Swedish organ builder Hans Davidsson researched the original wood and did metallurgy tests to match the exact metals in the Casparini in Lithuania. Those materials were brough to Rochester to construct the organ. “There’s not even a manufactured screw in that organ,” said Higgs. “It’s all hand forged iron. The idea is to recreate the behavior of the instrument—the way it feels and sounds and reacts to the players—not just the look of it or the stops.”

Because of this, it is a premiere instrument for performing Baroque repertoire. And now, area organists don’t have to travel to Europe to gain experience playing one. It also means that Rochester is a destination stop for traveling organists, who come both to perform and research organ music at Eastman’s Sibley Library, the most extensive music library in North America.

“Sometimes, we’ll have world famous people just making a cameo appearance at a short recital on a Tuesday afternoon,” said Higgs.

Hook and Hastings Organ in Christ Church. All photography by Eddie Zheng.

Christ Church also features a Hook and Hastings organ, which is a nineteenth century American organ preferred for Romantic music, what has been described as a “cigar and brandy organ.”

“It’s a very dark sound and it sort of oozes out of the chambers in the front,” explains Higgs. “The Craighead-Saunders Organ, on the other hand, is a much more bright and present sound.”

These organs also complement the Italian Baroque Organ located in the Memorial Art Gallery, where there are concerts every Sunday at 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., and on the third Thursday of the month for October, November, and December at 7:30 p.m.

Rochester’s flirtation with the organ is a long-term affair. George Eastman, the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company who established the Eastman School of Music, famously had an in-home Aeolian pipe organ. “That was his home entertainment system,” said Higgs. Eastman’s private organist, Harold Gleason, was one of the music school’s first faculty members. The George Eastman Museum—located at the Eastman estate on East Avenue—frequently presents organ concerts.

George Eastman’s penchant for the organ helped establish the Eastman School of Music as a leading institution for organ performance.

And just like daytime European organ concerts, audiences can come and go as they please for the casual Tuesday noon-time concerts at Christ Church. But please enjoy lunch in the courtyard, not inside the church, asks Higgs, as “mice tend to love organ bellows.”

Tuesday Pipes

Free, 25-minute lunchtime concerts by Eastman organists and guests.

Every Tuesday | 12:10 p.m.

Christ Church, 141 East Ave.